Perfusion Technique May Save Cardiac Arrest Patients

An experimental procedure for delivering oxygen to the heart after cardiac arrest may keep the victims alive long enough for doctors to repair the damage and prevent them from dying. The procedure was reported in the November 2001 issue of Critical Care Medicine by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, USA).

The procedure, called selective aortic arch perfusion (SAAP), employs a specialized balloon catheter to pump an oxygen-carrying fluid into the aorta. The fluid is HBOC-201, a hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier developed by Biopure Corp. (Cambridge, MA, USA). When the balloon is inflated, the oxygenated fluid is pumped in, perfusing the upper part of the body. The study involved a pig model of liver injury and severe bleeding. A blood pressure drop caused the animals' hearts to stop beating. Six of the animals were treated with SAAP and HBOC-201, and six were treated with SAAP and a saline solution. Spontaneous heartbeat with sustained aortic blood pressure occurred only in those animals that received the HBOC-201 solution. More animal studies are needed, to confirm the procedure's benefits, say the researchers.

"Cardiac arrest due to blood loss, hemorrhage, especially after blunt trauma, has an almost 100% mortality,” said James E. Manning, M.D., associate professor of emergency medicine at UNC School of Medicine and one of the study's co-authors. "If you can keep somebody like this alive, you may be able to get them to an operating room, stop the bleeding, and repair the damage.”





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