Re: [asa] Miracle healing?

Jack,

Thanks for the questions you raise below...as noted,
I'm not a doctor, so I don't have the background to
analyze such stories as well as I wish I could--my
post, was in part, to illicit these kind of questions
:) See my replies/questions interspersed below...

Thanks!
Christine (ASA member)

--- Jack <drsyme@cablespeed.com> wrote:

> I am almost positive that this is not a miracle.
> There are not enough
> details given to know.
>
> Before dissecting what details we have from this
> article, let me just say
> that it appears that this was a woman that had a
> cardiac arrest, got
> resuscitate by MET, was transferred to the hospital
> where they put her in
> hypothermia, was thought to have suffered anoxic
> brain injury, was declared
> dead by brain criteria, was being maintained on a
> ventilator to allow organ
> donation, and then woke up.
>
> How can such a thing happen? Well death by brain
> criteria is just an
> arbitrary definition of death. It is a series of
> examinations that try to
> detect residual brain activity, and rule out
> reversible causes of loss of
> brain activity. In this case, I suspect that they
> either didn't use
> rigorous enough tests to determine absence of brain
> activity, or were not
> careful about ruling out reversible causes. There
> is no mention in the
> article of what her neurological examination was,
> just that she had "no
> neurological function." Now, that comment was made
> by an internist, not a
> neurologist, so I have no idea what he really means
> by no neurological
> function, and in fact he could have been mistaken.

In layman's terms, I would have thought that "no
neurological function" is equivalent to brain
dead...as in nothing is working...no electrical
activity, no information being processed, no memories
or thoughts or consciousness being experienced...but,
is there another way(s) this phrase is used in the
medical profession that an internist (or others) could
be confused about?

> There is mention of "no
> brain waves for 17 hours". Again, that comment
> doesn't really make much
> sense without more detail. Was she hooked up to an
> EEG and was it monitored
> for 17 hours? That is not at all what is typically
> done. If a patient
> meets brain death criteria, via examination, and EEG
> can be done looking for
> a flat line EEG, that is no brain waves. But that
> is usually just a
> sampling of brain waves done over 40 minutes or so.

To clarify, an EEG would only be measuring a patient's
brain activity for 40 minutes and then would be
disconnected, or it would be connected continuously,
but would have a "sampling time" of 40 minutes and
then start a new measurement increment? If the latter,
wouldn't the results from the entire period of
measurement (say, 17 hours) be recorded somewhere to
review at a later time?
 
> And having a flat EEG
> alone is not an indication of brain death people
> placed in comas via
> anesthesia, anticonvulsants, and hey wow, by
> intentional hypothermia, can
> have flat EEG's that are completely reversible.

Each of these would be an intentional treatment
though, so there should be no confusion then as to why
there was a period of 17 hours without brain activity,
correct?

>
> My interpretation from the video, is that she
> arrested at 130 am, and
> remained unresponsive for the next 17 hours, during
> which some of that time
> she was in induced hypothermia.

I didn't watch the video...the article seemed to
indicate though that the chronology was first she was
unresponsive for 17 hours, then she arrested, then she
was treated with induced hypothermia...

>
> If someone legitimately meets brain death criteria,
> hypothermia is one of
> the things that you have to rule out as possibly
> reversible cause before you
> declare someone dead. A well known clinical example
> of this is children
> that drown. They often appear dead, they meet brain
> death criteria, but
> because of the hypothermia usually associated with
> this, condition is
> sometimes reversible. If they declared her brain
> dead after inducing
> hypothermia without giving her time to warm up,...
> well that is just so
> stupid it is hard to believe.

I've heard of this type of treatment...pretty
amazing...I'd agree you'd need more info. on how they
brought her out of the hypothermia in order to make a
more intelligent assessment.

>
> And again here is where the article makes no sense.
> Regarding the rigor
> mortis. The article says that they said good bye
> and removed all of the
> tubes. But they didn't remove the endotracheal tube
> because she was still
> on the ventilator! If someone is on a ventilator
> they are still alive, at
> least the body is still alive, even if they are dead
> by brain criteria. I
> can assure you that they were not ventilating a
> corpse with no heartbeat,
> and no pulse. I know this because they were
> discussing organ donation.
> Once the body dies, the heartbeat stops, there is no
> pulse etc, all of the
> organs deteriorate rapidly, and would not be used
> for organ donation. The
> ventilator is kept going in people who are
> somatically alive (pulse,
> heartbeat etc.) but brain dead. Therefore it is
> impossible for rigor mortis
> to have set in because the body was still alive
> because they were
> considering organ donation.

In the article, her son was quoted as saying ""Her
skin had already started to harden and her fingers
curled." Is there something besides rigor mortis that
would have this effect?

>
> I suspect that the family that gave this information
> to the reporter was
> confused about what was going on, or that the
> reporter just got it wrong.
> It also sounds like the doctors may have made a
> mistake in their brain death
> determination, but I would need a lot more reliable
> information before even
> considering this a miracle.
>
> This is a good example though of the benefit of
> induced hypothermia. This
> is the treatment that Kevin Everett received in the
> field during transport
> to the hospital. He went from catastrophic,
> life-threatening spinal cord
> injury, to being able to walk again.
>
> http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3012739
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Christine Smith"
> <christine_mb_smith@yahoo.com>
> To: <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 2:23 PM
> Subject: [asa] Miracle healing?
>
>
> > I'm no doctor, but if rigor mortis really was
> setting
> > in and there was zero brain function, I don't see
> how
> > this couldn't be a true miracle :) --any doubters
> out
> > there want to put out an alternative explanation??
> >
> http://www.newsnet5.com/health/16363548/detail.html
> >
> > In Christ,
> > Christine (ASA member)
> >
> > To unsubscribe, send a message to
> majordomo@calvin.edu with
> > "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the
> message.
> >
>
>

"For we walk by faith, not by sight" ~II Corinthians 5:7

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Received on Fri May 23 23:22:14 2008