Dr. Gary Steinberg

And in fact, it was finally shown in the early 2000s in prospective randomized studies that one type of stroke, actually two types I should say, two types of stroke

are benefited by cooling the brain quickly.

One is cardiac arrest from ventricular fibrillation and prospective studies which were published in 2002 showed that if you cool patients who have cardiac arrest and then are resuscitated out in the field down to between 32 and 34 degrees centigrade from 37,

much better outcomes neurologically.

That's from global ischemia.

That's the no blood getting to the brain briefly.

And the other area where it's been shown to have better outcomes is in neonatal, what's called hypostatic ischemic injury.

Those are neonates who have lack of blood flow for some reason to the brain when they're born.

And if you cool them, it's been shown in studies up to

10 years later that they have better cognitive outcomes.

So for cardiac arrest in the mid 2000s, I think it was 2003, the American Heart Association determined it was a standard of care, a guideline that you had to cool patients after cardiac arrest.

Yes.

Yeah, so there are many ways to do it, but in the animal models, you can just cool them with a cooling blanket, actually.

In people, we got very interested in this.

In fact, when I saw in the laboratory that it was so effective and that we could cure mouse and rat stroke by cooling, I started cooling my patients in the operating room.

because I felt even if it hadn't been proven in patients that it was so effective.

It's the gold standard now actually for neuroprotection against stroke in the laboratory.

So back in the 1990s, I started cooling all of my patients.

We started by cooling them by packing them in ice

and putting alcohol on them.