ERC News and Links
ERC News and Progress
The work of the ERC within the University and the surrounding community reflects our philosophy that cardiac arrest is a bigger problem than any one laboratory or scientific discipline. Our successes suggest what is possible when a small group of people think big. A list of our accomplishments since our inception in 1999 includes:
- New clinical protocols that improve CPR and cool patients after cardiac arrest have resulted in patients who have survived remarkably long “down times,” time without blood flow. These patients were discharged from the hospital to go back home. These new survivors challenge an old idea about cardiac arrest that there is no hope for recovery after 5-10 minutes of arrest. In fact, the story of two survivors have recently been featured in Newsweek and the Chicago Maroon (“Back from the Dead,” 7/23/07 and “Hospital treatments buy heart attack victims more time,” 10/9/07).
- Development of a micro-particulate ice slurry for rapid induction of cooling during cardiac arrest. This work was highlighted in a front page article of the New York Times.
- When cardiac arrest is simulated under a microscope, heart and brain cells can live far longer than we thought possible without oxygen. These findings suggest that a significant amount of injury may actually occur after we resuscitate or reperfuse the body following cardiac arrest. Changing the temperature or gas mixture at the time of resuscitation has significant potential to change outcome. This work was described in a cover story of the New York Times this summer.
- The University of Chicago was one of the first hospitals to highlight that quality of CPR performed by code teams in community and academic hospitals has significant potential to be improved. This work was published in JAMA. Subsequent articles suggested that even 10-20 seconds of delay without chest compressions may alter the chances of restarting the heart after cardiac arrest. Our medical center has purchased several new smart defibrillators that talk to the code teams during a resuscitation effort in order to improve CPR quality and the chances of a victim surviving a cardiac arrest while in the hospital.
- Molecular biology studies of cooling suggest that decreasing temperature a few degrees slows down a number of biochemical pathways in the heart as expected. More surprising, cooling also activates a number of intrinsic protective pathways that involve nitric oxide generation. This work was published in scientific journals within the last 6 months.
- As part of our community outreach, we have worked with a number of museums, businesses, housing complexes, churches, and public centers to train staff how to perform CPR and use an automatic defibrillator. A number of lives have been saved by these efforts.
In the News
The ERC has been featured in: