The latest developments in the science of rescucitation have made it possible to revive clinically dead patients even hours after their heart has stopped beating, according to medical experts.
“Historically, when a person’s heart stopped and they stopped breathing, for all intents and purposes, they were dead,” said Dr. Sam Parnia, an assistant professor of critical care medicine at State University of New York at Stony Brook. “There was nothing you could do to change that,” Parnia told an audience at the New York Academy of Sciences last week.
During the research process however, scientists have learned that a patients death is not instant, and at a cellular level is more of a ‘process’. Once the patient has actually ‘died’ by our own definition, that is where the body’s cells initiate the process of dying.
This process “could take hours of time, and we could potentially reverse that,” Parnia said.
For more details into the science behind the bodys dying process, head over to Discovery.com here.
