

Replacing blood with salt water could retrieve people from the brink of death - noobermin
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140704-i-bring-the-dead-back-to-life

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dragonsky67
Please do not misunderstand me, but I wonder how this procedure would change
the costs of medical treatment following traumatic injury. At present we have
a situation where patients who would be subjected to this treatment would die
in 90% of cases (from the article, where direct heart massage is used to
continue blood flow). If this treatment increases that survival rate
dramatically how many of those survivors would require further (expensive)
treatment?

Obviously this is not a simple question to answer. If the survival is
accompanied by severe disability requiring months/years of rehab, then costs
increase, if those surviving are left relatively unaffected then costs would
be stable or reduce.

I have a feeling that we are currently in a period of development of medical
treatment when we can (at cost with expensive and complex treatment) keep
people going for a longer period, both after traumatic injury and in total
age. However the quality of life may be low and cost of supporting that life
may be high. I think that this type of treatment may be progress towards more
simple and therefore less expensive treatments that have less adverse side
effects.

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that replacing a patients blood with salt
water whilst also lowering there temperature in a controlled way and
performing major surgery all at the same time is "simple", however it does
sound a lot less complex than some of the procedures that are done to keep
somebody going whilst trying to patch them back together following traumatic
injury.

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bluewolf
Don't apologise. Your view is held by a growing number of people who don't
want their lives saved by medical heroics - only to live a reduced quality of
life.

