Oxygen Microcapsule Injections

This is a neat trick and certainly can provide emergency oxygen when the lung itself has failed such as happens when drowning has taken place.  There been able to keep the heart working is critical to prevent more serious damage.

It certainly applies across the field and will become standard for first responder.  If the heart itself has stopped, a responder must keep compressing the heart as much as possible in order to provide a cyclic pressure wave that continues to jostle the blood throughout the body.  This has so far been proven to save lives up to two and one half hours after a stoppage.

It is also cheap and easy enough to make readily available whereas a CPR machine is way more difficult .

Oxygen microcapsules could save lives when patients can't breathe

By Ben Coxworth

10:39 June 29, 2012

http://www.gizmag.com/oxygen-microparticles/23139/

A syringe containing the oxygen microparticle solution

Six years ago, Dr. John Khier of Boston Children’s Hospital began investigating the idea of using injectable oxygen on patients whose lungs were incapacitated or whose airways were blocked. He was prompted to do so after a young girl that he was caring for passed away – she succumbed to a brain injury, which resulted when severe pneumonia caused her lungs to stop working properly, which in turn caused her blood oxygen levels to drop too low. Now, Khier is reporting that his team has injected gas-filled microparticles into the bloodstreams of oxygen-deprived lab animals, successfully raising their oxygen levels back to normal levels within seconds.

The microparticles are created using a device called a sonicator, which uses high-frequency sound waves to mix lipids (fatty molecules) and oxygen gas together. This results in the mixture forming into particles about two to four micrometers in diameter, each of which consists of an oxygen core surrounded by a lipid outer shell. Because the particles are so small and flexible, they are able to squeeze through capillaries – by contrast, if straight oxygen gas were injected, bubbles of it could block the blood flow and cause embolisms.

The microparticles are combined with a liquid carrier, so they can then be injected into the bloodstream. That suspension contains three to four times the amount of oxygen as regular red blood cells, so relatively small amounts of it are required, depending on how much of an oxygen level boost is required.

When the microparticle solution was tested on lab animals with blocked tracheas, it was able to keep them alive for up to 15 minutes without their taking a single breath, plus it also reduced low-oxygen-related cardiac arrests and organ injuries.

It is intended that the treatment would be used mainly in emergency response scenarios, to hold non-breathing patients over for 15 to 30 minutes – the carrier liquid would overload the bloodstream if used for longer. Khier and his team envision paramedics, emergency clinicians or intensive care personnel keeping supplies of the microparticle solution close at hand and ready to go, should it be needed.

“This is a short-term oxygen substitute—a way to safely inject oxygen gas to support patients during a critical few minutes,” he said. “Eventually, this could be stored in syringes on every code cart in a hospital, ambulance or transport helicopter to help stabilize patients who are having difficulty breathing.”

Although already-available blood substitutes are capable of carrying oxygen, they still first need to be oxygenated by functioning lungs.

A paper on the research was published this Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Living Without Breathing: Scientists Keep Rabbits Alive With Oxygen Injections

Rabbits with completely blocked windpipes were able to stay alive for up to 15 minutes without a single breath after researchers injected tiny oxygen-filled microparticles into the animals' blood stream, in a "potential breakthrough" that may help save many lives in the emergency room.

BY CHRISTINE HSU | JUNE 27, 2012

Rabbits with completely blocked windpipes were able to stay alive for up to 15 minutes without a single breath after researchers injected tiny oxygen-filled microparticles into the animals' blood stream, in a "potential breakthrough" that may help save many lives in the emergency room.

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Photo: Children's Hospital Boston

An injected gas-filled microparticle (yellow) can transfer oxygen molecules directly to red blood cells (red), bypassing the lungs to carry throughout the body.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20120627/10496/oxygen-breathing-microparticles-injections.htm

Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have come up with a way to bypass the lungs and deliver oxygen to the bloodstream of patients who cannot or have stopped breathing by using injectable oxygen.

Patients who stop breathing, may it be from an obstruction in their airway or acute lung failure, need another way to get oxygen to their blood fast or risk going into cardiac arrest or serious brain injury. Scientists believe that the new technique has the potential to hold off injuries like cardiac arrest, brain injury and cerebral palsy induced by oxygen deprivation.

Previous attempts to treat hypoxaemia or low oxygen levels in the blood and other related conditions like cyanosis with oxygen injections have had varying degrees of success, mainly because these past methods of injection free oxygen gas directly into the bloodstream can be dangerous because free oxygen gas can accumulate into larger bubbles and form potentially lethal blockages in the body called pulmonary embolisms.

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However a new study, published in the Science Translational Medicine, has found a way around the danger by injecting the body with oxygen in liquid form.

Lead author Dr. John Kheir, of the Department of Cardiology at Boston Children's Hospital, and colleagues designed a lipid foam infusion of microparticles that consists of a single layer of lipids or fatty molecules that surround a tiny pocket of oxygen gas. 

Researchers explain that once the solution is injected, the gaseous oxygen will still be contained and suspended in a liquid mixture to prevent it from getting to other oxygen particles to form larger bubbles.

Kheir said that the particles are injected directly into the bloodstream where they will mix with circulating red blood cells, allowing the oxygen to diffuse into the cells within seconds of contact, according to Nature.

"By the time the microparticles get to the lungs, the vast majority of the oxygen has been transferred to the red blood cells," Kheir said, according to Nature.

Researchers say that oxygen-filled microparticle solution is different from the other various types of artificial blood currently used in medicine because while they can carry oxygen around the body, they still need to receive oxygen from the lungs.

Kheir said that the lipid foam solution is safe because as the oxygen leaves the bubbles, the shells buckle and fold and the fatty molecules break off and are reabsorbed by the body.

Kheir and his team had injected rabbits with the liquid solution and found that the animals were able to be kept alive for up to 15 minutes without breathing. The animals also had normal blood pressure and heart rate, and showed no indication of heart, lung or liver damage that is usually caused by oxygen deprivation or pulmonary embolisms, which can happen if free oxygen gas is injected into the bloodstream.

"Essentially as soon as we started injecting it, clinically we started to see an effect," Kheir said, according to Science. However, he noted that when the injection stopped, the levels fell just as quickly, meaning that the microparticle-solution must be continuously administered.

Researchers said that the microparticle solutions are cheap to make, portable, could stabilize patients in emergency situations, and make time for doctors to perform other urgent life-saving therapies. 

"This is a short-term oxygen substitute—a way to safely inject oxygen gas to support patients during a critical few minutes," Kheir said in a statement. "Eventually, this could be stored in syringes on every code cart in a hospital, ambulance or transport helicopter to help stabilize patients who are having difficulty breathing."

However he noted that the microparticles should only be administered for a maximum of 15 to 30 minutes, because they are carried in a solution that is mostly comprised of liquid, and the fluid would overload the blood if used for longer periods.

"If we could increase the ratio of microparticles to fluid, we might be able to use this for even longer, and even more indications," Kheir said, according to Science.

"This is a potential breakthrough," says cardiac intensive care doctor Peter Laussen of Boston Children's Hospital, who was not involved in the work. "You can apply this across healthcare, from the battlefield to the emergency room, intensive care unit, or operating room."