Skiing and Hypothermia

On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 15:48:54 +0200, Florian Anwander
wrote:

So a "re-warmer" tool will belong to the medical equipment of a rescue
team. My fear is that this will be covered by the hospital related patent.

The other device is for cooling down a patient. In my earlier post for
the rec.backcountry thread on this topic, I explained why heating and
cooling will not work the same due to physiology.

This essentially means you can
take the person out of hypothermia in about 20 min.
I always thought that rewarming hypothermic persons too fast causes
severe problems; example ventricular fibrillation by the "Afterdrop" (I
am not sure it is the right word; in German it is called "Ploetzlicher
Bergungstod" which could be translated as "Sudden Rescue Death").

Not that simple. Although your English is much better than my German,
the terms you used make sense.

Too rapid rewarming of a hypothermia victim will cause a variety of
medical problems including heart arrythmias. Because medications do
not work the same at all body temperatures, handling heart issues in
someone being rewarmed makes a regular cardiac arrest seem like
kindergarten.

Also later in that thread, I had mentioned the issue of the
hypothermia patient temporarily losing some ability to manage their
temperature, and overheating them could put them into heat stroke.

The normal techniques are to gently rewarm them at a controlled rate,
monitoring various vitals. 20 minutes? Might as well put them in a
giant microwave oven.

Happy trails,
Gary (net.yogi.bear)
------------------------------------------------
at the 51st percentile of ursine intelligence

Gary D. Schwartz, Needham, MA, USA
Please reply to: garyDOTschwartzATpoboxDOTcom