Surviving Extreme Cold Environment; A Case Study

I saw a movie titled breakthrough, and it was based on the true life story of a young boy from St. Louis who fell through frozen water in a lake and survived miraculously. It looks like humans are built to adapt to certain extreme temperatures if not all the time and for the sake of this post, I will be looking into what happens to the body when a person is frozen alive, what do medical staff have to do towards the recovery of such person, and do people find their way back to life and if they do, how do they take it.

The young boy from the movie is John Smith from St. Louis, other people I was able check are Michelle Funk, and Justin Smith, and these three were believed to be dead and come back to life but then, what is the definition of death?

For a person to be declared clinically dead in a hospital, the patient should not have a pulse, and not breathing. This might differ from regions to regions but based on standard, checking pulse and breathing is enough to declare a person clinically death since the hearth has stopped pumping and in the case of the three people mentioned previously, they were declared dead.

In the case of John Smith, he was submerged in frozen lake for about 15 minutes before he was rescued. As at the time when he was found, his heart was no more beating, he was not breathing, and he had no pulse. Justin Smith was buried deep within feet of snow, and paramedics came, he didn't have a heartbeat. Michelle Funk was also submerged in frozen lake, was there for about 66 minutes before medics arrived. When they arrived, there was no sign of breathing or pulse from the heart monitor. We can say that they were clinically dead but then came back alive.

The body when immersed in extremely cold environment begin to experience hypothermia and this occur when there is a drop in body temperature. The body temperature of the average human is within 97.7 degrees F and 99.5 degrees F (Normothermia). In the case of an increased body temperature, one can have a temperature of 99.5 degrees F to 100.9 degrees F and this is referred to as Hyperthermia. In the case of hypothermia, the body temperature drops below 95.0 degrees F where the body is losing more heat than it can absorb.

In mild cases of hypothermia, people can shiver and in extreme cases, it can lead to paradoxical undressing where people start to remove their cloths thinking they are hot when they are actually feeling cold. This is a confusing state as a result of the cold, and some people believe it is a function of the hypothalamus which is responsible controlling temperature. People would normally die from this event but in the case where they were rescued by medics, the rewarming process needs to begin immediately.

To start with, the rewarming procedures include passive rewarming, airway rewarming, and extracorporeal rewarming. With passive rewarming, it has to do with a blanket, a medicine, and a hot chocolate. With airway rewarming, a mask with humidified oxygen is given to the patient. In the case of extracorporeal rewarming, the patient's blood is drawn, rewarmed, and returned back into the body.

In most cases of extracorporeal rewarming, the patient would have undergone surgery and the patient's blood cooled so as to prevent increased metabolism which can lead to brain damage. This was the method used to save Michelle funk's life and this case was in 1988 and although the procedure was still in its infancy, it was able to save her life. Fast forward to Justin Smith and the same procedure was still used as his body temperature was extremely low and there were a lot of amputation done to keep him alive. His pinkies and toes were completely amputated but he survived. In the case of John Smith, while the faith part was emphasized in the movie Breakthrough, Extracorporeal rewarming was also used as well as passive rewarming and airway rewarming. There was also about 27 minutes of CPR and him back to life.

Talking about dying and coming back, a lot of people do not agree with the fact that these people died. Although they check some of the criteria of being dead but people like Doctor Gerals Coleman says "You're not dead until you're warm and dead". Other people like thermophysiologist Gordon Giesbrecht says that "We'vw learned that there really is no temperature so low that a person shouldn't try to save someone". They all say that as the body cools, the metabolic rate of the body slows down and this could have kept them alive. The stories of John Smith, Michelle Funk, and Justin Smith reveal the remarkable resilience of the human body and the advanced medical techniques that can bring people back from the brink of death.

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Post Reference

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_{https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18525042/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/541627/
https://www.outsideonline.com/2046306/how-new-science-freezing-can-save-your-life
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hypothermia/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20352688
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/0886022X.2012.673466
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011224015300134
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/26/science/the-doctor-s-world-ingenuity-and-a-miraculous-revival.html
https://www.lvhn.org/stories/found-frozen-justin-smith-makes-amazing-recovery
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11104248/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5995587/
https://journals.lww.com/asaiojournal/abstract/2023/08000/extracorporeal_rewarming_is_associated_with.4.aspx}

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Image Reference

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Image 1 || getarchive || An Emergency Medical Ambulance team off loads a critical patient at the hospital emergency entrance
Image 2 || Raw Pixel || Emergency Drill, Live disaster drill simulates a plane crash and emergency response at Pitt-Greenville Airport