Why does your life flash before your eyes near death?

Survivors of close calls with death often recall extraordinary experiences: seeing light at the end of a tunnel, floating outside their own bodies, encountering deceased loved ones or recapping major life events in an instant.

Stable, self-disrupting microbubbles as intravenous oxygen carriers

Severe oxygen deficiency eventually leads to cardiac arrest. If the blood's oxygen content cannot be rapidly re-established, the patient may die within minutes. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, American scientists have introduced ...

'Ambulance drone' prototype unveiled in Holland

A Dutch-based student on Tuesday unveiled a prototype of an "ambulance drone", a flying defibrillator able to reach heart attack victims within precious life-saving minutes.

Bangladeshi, South Korean climbers die on Everest

A climber from Bangladesh and another from South Korea have died on Mount Everest as hundreds flock to the world's highest peak during good weather, Nepalese tourism officials said Tuesday.

page 1 from 2

Cardiac arrest

A cardiac arrest, also known as cardiopulmonary arrest or circulatory arrest, is the abrupt cessation of normal circulation of the blood due to failure of the heart to contract effectively during systole.

A cardiac arrest is different from (but may be caused by) a heart attack or myocardial infarction, where blood flow to the still-beating heart is interrupted (as in cardiogenic shock).

"Arrested" blood circulation prevents delivery of oxygen to all parts of the body. Cerebral hypoxia, or lack of oxygen supply to the brain, causes victims to lose consciousness and to stop normal breathing, although agonal breathing may still occur. Brain injury is likely if cardiac arrest is untreated for more than five minutes, although new treatments such as induced hypothermia have begun to extend this time. To improve survival and neurological recovery immediate response is paramount.

Cardiac arrest is a medical emergency that, in certain groups of patients, is potentially reversible if treated early enough (See "reversible causes" below). When unexpected cardiac arrest leads to death this is called sudden cardiac death (SCD). The primary first-aid treatment for cardiac arrest is cardiopulmonary resuscitation (commonly known as CPR) which provides circulatory support until availability of definitive medical treatment, which will vary dependent on the rhythm the heart is exhibiting, but often requires defibrillation.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA