Re: [asa] Miracle healing?

Let me just say to clear this up, that the article got a lot of things,
wrong. It was very poorly written, and very confusing.

"o neurological function"is not a technical term. So I dont know what he
means. And even reading between the lines it is harder for me to know what
he means since he is not trained in neurologic observation. Assuming that
he means that she met full brain death criteria still raises questions for
me (did they do an apnea test? did they do cold water calorics? etc.)

EEGs can be done continuously, people can be monitored. But this is done
for epilepsy to precisely determine the location of a seizure focus. It is
not done for brain death determinations. Yes the EEG would have been done
for 40 minutes then removed.

But, dont get confused by the way the article was written. I am sure the
sequence of events was that she had an even at home, the ambulance came and
found her pulseless and started CPR, when they got to the hospital they
started the induced hypothermia immediately.

So the rest of the story is about a patients response to cardiac arrest and
induced hypothermia. The lack of neurological function, the flat EEG, could
all be secondary to hypothermia in addition to the arrest. But, this was an
example of reversible appearence of brain death because of the hypothermia.
This is not a unique case.

I dont know what the son was talking about regarding the rigor mortis. But
she was never off of the ventilator, so she was supported throughout this
event so there was no conceivable way that rigor mortis had set in.
Certainly there would not have been skin changes in such a short period of
time.

I want to make two final points.

First, this is an example of a remarkable case. Her chance of survival was
very low, but it was not on the order of miraculous. This woman did not
come back from the dead.

Second, the scary part of this is that this is an example of a doctor using
a technology that he knows nothing about. It could have been the case that
they withdrew support from someone that was in a potentially reversible
condition, because they did not know enough about induced hypothermia to
give the patient enough time to come back. And, if I am going to indulge my
cynicism in addition to my skepticism, he is encouraging the miraculous
aspect to cover up his negligence.

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Received on Sat May 24 06:18:46 2008