[TowerTalk] Lightning resuscitation

[S. J. Blackwell]

I have been following this thread with some amusement. It has come to mind 
that perhaps further comment should be made as suggestions have been made 
that could result in harm to individuals.
I believe that Yuri's father was telling the truth, however, I believe that 
the observation has been wrongly interpreted.
First I do not want to get into some kind of knowitall kerfuffle, so at the 
outset I will state that I do not know it all. I do, however, know a little 
on the subject at hand. Let me state where I am coming from. I have a degree 
in engineering physics and an MD degree. I am board certified in Internal 
Medicine and the subsepciality of cardiovascular disease by the American 
Board of Internal Medicine. I have 7 years of postdoctoral training and 
research, some of which included rather detailed study of cardiac electrical 
activity in isolated hearts. (to date myself, we used a PDP-7 and later a 
PDP-11 for data manipulation for the old timers) I am also a member of both 
the physics and medicall honor societies. I have counter shocked literally 
hundreds of people with lethal cardiac rhythm disturbances over 25+ years of 
practice and have been counter shocked myself following an electrical 
accident in a hospital where, fortunately, a defibrillator was immediately 
available. Now to the question at hand:

High voltage, high current discharges through tissue is destructive through 
heat generation. I have seen a human being (female) and the horse she was 
riding literally made almost into hamburger as the energy heated the tissues 
to the point of near explosive vaporization of the body fluids. This is not 
the subject at hand. Two other effects are of interest:

(1) Direct cardiac effects.
(2) Direct Central nervous system effects
Neither of these require high voltage or high current, only enough to 
produce cellular depolarization in the brain or heart to the extent that an 
undesired occurance is produced.

The brain --- Passage of a relatively low current can produce wide spread 
cell depolarization and the equivalent to a grand mal siezure associated 
with loss of consciousness and most importantly suppression of respirations. 
This may lead to death if respiration is not supported.

The Heart --- First a little info on myocytes (heart cells). They undergo 
spontaneous electrical depolarization. A group of myocytes placed in a petri 
dish will individually undergo spontaneous seperate dopolarizations. This is 
associated with contraction of the cell. If watched for a while they will 
all synchronize and begin to contract in unison as the first cell to 
depolarize conducts to the next cell etc.. In the intact heart this results 
in the biologic pump doing is job. Now pass an electrical current through 
the heart muscle of the proper placement, magnitude, and duration (not hard 
to do) and you get multiple disordered waves of mucsle cell depolarization. 
The pump no longer pumps as the contractions of the cells are no longer 
ordered. This is self sustaining as the waves of depolarization spread, the 
cells repolarize only to be depolarized as the multiple wave fronts return 
in what could be compared to undesired positive feed back. This is 
ventricular fibrillation and is death. It is a self sustaining and is the 
reason for the counter shock which simultaneously depolarizes all of the 
myocytes to  extinguish the "positive feed back".

So if you are witness to one of these occurances give CPR. You cannot give 
CPR after only watching it on television. It must be taught,studied, and 
practiced, not just once but as an on going thing. The concept that there is 
some sort of stored energy field causing this is just wrong. I have fooled 
with hearts suspended in Ringer's solution in a tank long enough to have 
observed this without having to call upon some sort of persistant 
undisipated self sustaining ungrounded energy field.

Now to Yuri's father's observation. We will assume that the observation was 
correct for the sake of discussion. Two things come to mind:(1) Spontaneous 
reversal of ventricular fibrillation, most likely to occur in otherwise 
healthy hearts and unusual, but possible. Two occurances in juxtaposition--- 
very low probability. (2) Central nervous system depression, possible, but 
unlikely. Supressed respirations for the time implied would result in 
extensive brain damage or death.

I therefore do not believe that Yuri's dad was lying, only mistaken. We 
cannot assume that,as the rooster may, that crowing makes the sun rise.
Learn CPR and keep in practice. Burial can come after it fails.

Sorry for this long diatribe,
73,
Sam, W5LU


my father had no reason to lie to me. Those two cases happened. He was a
>(catholic) priest, he was called to give the last rights to persons. He 
>took the
>shovel (people were crying over the loss and were incapable to do 
>anything),
>dug the "grave" and in those two cases life returned.
>
>_______________________________________________
>
>

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