My wife, an ED physician, says that this is common practice in the EDs she’s worked in and that it probably just had not been reported in the literature
The other commenter was insinuating a different ED than Emergency Department and Eating Disorder in their next statement. One that a little blue pill may help with.
It already stands for Executive Director and Early Death. It's possible that the ED of an ED had an ED which led to him suffering from ED and ultimately having an ED.
The specific use of body bags/cadaver pouches for this purpose is also an old policy (since at least 2005 based on my experience) in marine SAR, so I echo your wife's sentiments.
I imagine some of the importance of documenting ED techniques like this is because in the prehospital setting many of the interventions that nonphysicians are allowed to provide are governed by standing protocols. For regional medical directors to endorse such interventions by third-parties, they require the techniques be well-documented before they are formally adopted.
"Novel" I guess it is novel in using a body bag to do it?
I remember literally at my first scout camp, we were talking about first aid and heat stroke came up. We were on a long pier, and the instructor said: "toss them in the water then treat for shock." So water cooling is well known to be the best way to treat someone.
Nope, it's more mundane than that. It's novel for non-exertion heat stroke. Seems to me like a distinction without a difference. How the body got into an overheated seems mostly irrelevant as to whether an ice bath in a tub vs a bag. But they acknowledge this technique is used in exertional heat stroke.
I always wondered if there was a market for a "cool suit" with astronaut-style cold water tubes all over it you could hook a garden hose up to while working in the yard. Water the grass and cool yourself off at the same time.
There's been some interesting stuff about cooling the body for exercise performance, and they've found that the soles of the feet, the palms of the hands, and the cheeks are the locations that are most efficient in applying the cooling.
surgically implanted tubes sounds fun. We could run them though your entire body. Like water holes in cpu's
Or perhaps one could repurpose existing tubing.
Please be careful when plumbing external connections into the human circulatory system. Several important security mechanisms are bypassed, and there's much more complexity to blood than is initially obvious.
I want a device that hooks into my circulatory system and diverts my blood flow through it, filtering out microplastics and other shit that shouldn't be there, and then cooling it down slightly before putting it back in.
Donate plasma, it works reasonably well. If you have antibodies you want to keep it might be bad though because those count as the plasma and get taken out.
A coworker of mine spent a lot of time maintaining computers in warehouses in the US South and picked up a jacket with basically PC-fans built in, it had sleeves and some of the airflow was down the sleeves. We mostly joked about needing to overclock our field technicians...
With today's hardware there's not a lot of difference. If you keep things cool and maybe unlock a limit or two, you'll get better performance automatically. The parallels seem pretty good :)
I've been wondering: If someone is experiencing heat stroke, and you have access to, say a bathtub and sufficient ice, should you cool them yourself, or call 911 immediately instead?
Do they do anything fancy, or is the standard response just cooling until they are normal?
If they have a temp of 104, start cooling immediately and call 911. No need to get fancy, although if you can only cool in a couple spots, under arms/on neck/head/chest is better than the extremities or something.
The opposite, treating hypothermia, is much more technically specific in how to treat without harming the person more. Look it up if you will be in very cold wet places for extended periods. But if you don't know what to do, call 911 and ask them.
Great question. Short answer from the Red Cross and Mayo Clinic: (1) Contact 911 first (2) Begin immediate cooling by any method including removing them from the hot environment, removing their clothing, and applying cold water immersion or cold water on skin with fanning and (3) transfer to hospital while continuing to cool
For adults with exertional hyperthermia or heatstroke, it is reasonable to initiate immediate active cooling by using whole-body (neck down) cool- to cold-water immersion techniques (1°C–26°C [33.8°F–78.8°F]), when safe, until a core body temperature of <39°C (102.2°F) is reached or neurological symptoms resolve.
For children with exertional hyperthermia or heatstroke, it may be reasonable to initiate immediate active cooling by using whole-body (neck down) cool- to cold-water immersion techniques (1°C–26°C [33.8°F–78.8°F]), when safe, until a core body temperature of <39°C (102.2°F) is reached or neurological symptoms resolve.”
From this we can conclude you might reasonably cool those suffering from heat stroke yourself within the generally-accepted first aid standards or scope of practice (in fact, the Red Cross/AHA use the language should for their active cooling recommendations in some summaries). You would want to have a way of checking the patient’s temperature to cease cooling interventions when it reaches 102.2°F (other sources advise stopping if the patient begins to shiver). This recommendation was added in 2020, the most recent guideline update.
The fancy interventions that paramedics and advanced prehospital clinicians can administer include IV fluid replacement, anticonvulsants, and intubation (cf. https://emcrit.org/ibcc/hyperthermia/) and the ambulance has a/c and potentially other cooling devices. Also there is a possibility for cardiac failure https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8843991/ so all providers should be prepared to initiate CPR and EMS has tools for cardiac monitoring and support/resuscitation.
I have had heat stroke before. A big Zero out of 10 experience. 4 days in hospital. Probably shed a few IQ points along the way.
They didn't do this for me, Instead I just got tossed in a pluge pool, then icepacks under the arms and 12 bags of IV fluids whilst my kidneys shut down from the injury (very painful).
All good now but we're going to need to socialize this sort of knowledge more and more.
I was in the ICU after a motorcycle accident many years ago. I spiked a severe fever, and they used cold blankets -- sheet-sized, very thin ice packs -- to cool me down. Most assuredly, that experience sucked ass. Better than dying, I suppose, but not by much.
Yeah the idea of being in a body bag full of ice water sounds pretty uncomfortable. If they were doing it to me I would ask to have my hands and feet put in something like boxing gloves to keep them warm. And my nads too, now that I think of it. Yeesh.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadNot sure how effective cold water immersion would be at treating the other kind of ED...
Back in the day we used to refer to that particular reaction as “beach dick”
I remember literally at my first scout camp, we were talking about first aid and heat stroke came up. We were on a long pier, and the instructor said: "toss them in the water then treat for shock." So water cooling is well known to be the best way to treat someone.
So perhaps just "cool boots" might be enough.
https://texascoolvest.com/ https://www.coolingvest.com/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29112514/
Works great to cool down well below ambient air temp as long as humidity isn't super high.
Public coverage and context by Boston Globe Media’s STAT: https://www.statnews.com/2023/07/18/doctors-prepare-for-extr...
The opposite, treating hypothermia, is much more technically specific in how to treat without harming the person more. Look it up if you will be in very cold wet places for extended periods. But if you don't know what to do, call 911 and ask them.
Details: The American Red Cross in their current guidelines available at https://cpr.heart.org/en/resuscitation-science/first-aid-gui... and https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000900 advise that “For adults and children with exertional hyperthermia or heat stroke, first aid providers should move the individual from the hot environment, remove excess clothing, limit exertion, and activate emergency services.
For adults with exertional hyperthermia or heatstroke, it is reasonable to initiate immediate active cooling by using whole-body (neck down) cool- to cold-water immersion techniques (1°C–26°C [33.8°F–78.8°F]), when safe, until a core body temperature of <39°C (102.2°F) is reached or neurological symptoms resolve.
For children with exertional hyperthermia or heatstroke, it may be reasonable to initiate immediate active cooling by using whole-body (neck down) cool- to cold-water immersion techniques (1°C–26°C [33.8°F–78.8°F]), when safe, until a core body temperature of <39°C (102.2°F) is reached or neurological symptoms resolve.”
From this we can conclude you might reasonably cool those suffering from heat stroke yourself within the generally-accepted first aid standards or scope of practice (in fact, the Red Cross/AHA use the language should for their active cooling recommendations in some summaries). You would want to have a way of checking the patient’s temperature to cease cooling interventions when it reaches 102.2°F (other sources advise stopping if the patient begins to shiver). This recommendation was added in 2020, the most recent guideline update.
The fancy interventions that paramedics and advanced prehospital clinicians can administer include IV fluid replacement, anticonvulsants, and intubation (cf. https://emcrit.org/ibcc/hyperthermia/) and the ambulance has a/c and potentially other cooling devices. Also there is a possibility for cardiac failure https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8843991/ so all providers should be prepared to initiate CPR and EMS has tools for cardiac monitoring and support/resuscitation.
They didn't do this for me, Instead I just got tossed in a pluge pool, then icepacks under the arms and 12 bags of IV fluids whilst my kidneys shut down from the injury (very painful).
All good now but we're going to need to socialize this sort of knowledge more and more.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01960...