Kevin Everett and therapeutic hypothermia

The big story from the NFL’s first weekend, and the news took a turn for the better yesterday. Did prompt therapeutic hypothermia play a role?

The concept is simple: Neurons have a voracious appetite for oxygen, and when deprived of it, very quickly begin to undergo cell death. So, the theory goes, by dropping the body temperature very rapidly as quickly as possible after an anoxic insult to neural tissue, as the brain is deprived of oxygen during cardiac arrest, you can slow the metabolic rate and greatly reduce the magnitude of cellular damage. And since it is pretty clear that spinal cord injuries (SCI) have a fundamental mechanism of cord contusion/edema/anoxia as the actual mechanism of injury, it makes sense that this application might be beneficial for SCI.