Alcor’s last two cases were landmark cases. A-2357, a case performed by Alcor’s Arizona team outside of Phoenix in June, reached a temperature of +20 degrees Celsius only 50 minutes after pronouncement of legal death. This beat by several minutes the previous record for the fastest cooling to that temperature, a record that has stood for 21 years since case A-1049 in the year 1990. Cooling rate is important during stabilization of cryonics patients because it protects the brain from injuring itself after being subjected to a few minutes of stopped blood circulation while legal death pronounced, and from further injury that can occur if blood flow and oxygenation during subsequent chest compressions are inadequate. The cooling rate was enhanced for case A-2357 by Alcor’s newly-redesigned Surface Convection Cooling Device (SCCD), more popularly known as a SQUID. Alcor congratulates Aaron Drake and his team.
A-2091, an Alcor case in Southern California in August where stabilization and transport were performed by Suspended Animation, Inc. (SA), reached +20 degrees Celsius in 55 minutes. What made this case unique was how this cooling was achieved. This was the first cryonics case in which a board certified cardiothoracic surgeon performed the field surgery to place the patient on cardiopulmonary bypass. (This is a process in which cooled blood washout solution from a heart-lung machine is circulated through femoral vessels in the leg.) With the assistance of a certified clinical perfusionist working with the surgeon, the patient was successfully placed on bypass only 15 minutes after pronouncement. This is a new record for establishment of bypass for cryonics cases. The patient’s temperature was reduced below +10 degC 67 minutes after pronouncement, also a new cryonics record. Alcor congratulates SA team leader Catherine Baldwin and her team, and looks forward to further collaboration with SA to achieve such excellence in cryonics casework.
