When the blood stops circulating to the brain you have mere moments to revive someone, lest the damage to their central nervous system’s epicenter be irreparable. However, scientists in China have recently resuscitated the brain of pigs after nearly an hour of death and were even able to restore brain function.
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00:00When the blood stops circulating to the brain, you have mere moments to revive someone, lest
00:08the damage to their central nervous system's epicenter be irreparable.
00:12However, scientists in China have recently resuscitated the brains of pigs after nearly
00:16an hour of death, restoring brain function.
00:19When the heart stops beating and blood ceases to circulate to organs, that is called ischemia.
00:24Experts have long believed that this plays a key role in death, especially with regards
00:28to ischemia in certain organs, so researchers sought to figure out if preventing liver ischemia
00:33might aid in resuscitating euthanized animals.
00:36And it did.
00:37Looking at the pigs post-mortem, the group that had liver ischemia prevented had the
00:40least brain damage.
00:42What's more, subsequent resuscitations, which incorporated the liver into an artificial
00:45life support system, were actually better at reviving the pigs.
00:49What's more, their brains were also reactivated, with the researchers detecting electrical
00:53activity, though none of the subjects survived for very long after.
00:56If these results are transitive to human patients, this could be a massive jump forward
01:00in medicine, aiding doctors in widening the narrow window in which they have to resuscitate
01:05patients who have experienced sudden cardiac arrest.