28 2 / 2012
Heart Stop Beating: The Story of the First Man WIth No Pulse
If we were to walk outside and ask the first hundred people on the street what criteria someone would have to possess in order to be “alive”, I am guessing that a heartbeat would be at or near the top of the list.
In most of our bodies, that electrochemical muscle machine works without fail. But others aren’t so lucky. Doctors are left with two choices then: Repair the heart, or replace it outright.
This film by Jeremiah Zagar tells the story of Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier, two visionary surgeons from the Texas Heart Institute, and their quest to save a man’s life by taking away his heartbeat.
You may remember the groundbreaking device from this stunning movie from last year. Science does mighty amazing things.
(by Focus Forward Films)
When I was doing an ambulance ride-along for my EMT certification, we got a call to a nursing home (about 99% of an ambulance’s calls, BTW) and I couldn’t get vitals on the very elderly woman that we were there to pick up. She had no discernible pulse in her arms or chest (one of the paramedics had to push on the carotid artery to get a pulse) and it was impossible to get a blood pressure reading and yet she was still sitting up and talking to us and waving her arms around. It’s amazing how flexible the human body is. Your blood volume can be so low that your pulse can barely be detected by palpation in your neck and yet you can be asking the paramedic questions.
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