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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 18, 1996)
The Battalion a V • SeptenJ riFivri? 1 1j 11 xj 1 j Wednesday Page 7 September 18, 1996 y hospitals plan test of artificial blood Men, Pua Ms Mf KtD U | Braces t S Kl AAEl it s Mom Like... FAAfftjM/i, ■ASHINGTON (AP) — Trauma itients rushed to Chicago’s Cook ty Hospital soon may awaken [scover they’re pioneers in the h for artificial blood, as a red that looks like real blood — sn’t — drips into their veins, petors at Cook County and 20 It emergency rooms nationwide iteithis fall will begin the first mass Mng of a potential substitute for an blood. That will involve 850 nts. A competing firm is seek- overnment approval to test eds of additional patients, one expects these first at- pts to supplant nature. But ie hope is that artificial blood save lives when doctors run t on the real stuff. Ilf blood is unavailable, and does happen, this provides a ge until you can get it,” said ard DeWoskin of Northfield (oratories Inc., which is trying et approval for tests. De- |kin expects artificial blood I day to help in the military, (eloping countries and in the an battlefield” of inner cities. |ut some experts are skeptical, here are health risks from the iilhtitute to be tested, Baxter IthCare’s HemAssist, some sci- sts believe. It raises blood pres- through complex blood vessel changes that Dr. Gerald Sandler, director of Georgetown University Medical Center’s blood bank, fears could cause harm. The Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, is examining some reports that ar tificial blood might shut down the body’s capillary system. “We don’t want to impose upon the public something that could be more dangerous” than today’s overwhelmingly safe blood donations, said Dr. Joseph Fratantoni, the FDA’s hematology chief. “Caution is the word here.” The search for artificial blood dates to the 17th century, when doctors unsuccessfully tried transfusions with animal blood or even wine. The quest gained urgency in the 1980s when thousands caught the AIDS virus from tainted blood, a risk that today has plum meted to less than one case per 450,000 pints of blood. Although blood now is largely safe, it stays fresh only weeks after donation, hospitals sometimes face shortages and patients must receive the right blood type or risk a deadly allergic reaction. So scientists are brewing non- allergenic substitutes that would stay fresh for up to a year, using everything from outdated hu man blood to genetically engi neered bacteria and even an oily byproduct of Teflon. Six firms have done early test ing in a small number of Ameri cans to see how well the sub stances carry oxygen to tissues — blood’s main function. Now, the FDA has approved the first large-scale study of a potential “Caution is the word here.” Dr. Joseph Fratantoni FDA hematology chief blood substitute, HemAssist, and is considering allowing a similar study of Northfield’s PolyHeme. The 20 other hospitals, besides Cook County, have yet to be chosen. Both liquids are made from outdated blood. Scientists stripped human hemoglobin, the blood protein that carries oxygen, out of the cell coating that makes it cause allergic reactions and then chemically modified it to stay fresh longer. The question is whether it can help trauma patients survive or reduce the amount of real blood they need. Baxter is banking on HemAssist as a “resuscitation fluid,” said lead researcher, Dr. Edward Sloan of the University of Illinois, Chicago. Take a car crash victim in shock from blood loss. Ambu lance workers now infuse pints of salt water to keep the veins from collapsing until the patient reach es the hospital and blood sup plies. But salt water carries no oxygen to keep organs alive — and large volumes can actually damage organs. So even when blood revives the most severe trauma patients in the emergency room, 40 percent still ultimately die from organ damage. Small amounts of HemAssist appear to raise blood pressure as much as large volumes of salt wa ter — while also providing oxy gen, explained Sloan, who heads the study of 850 trauma patients. This fake blood lives in a per son’s bloodstream just a few days before ceasing to be effective. It doesn’t clot or fight infections like real blood does, so it’s not a per manent replacement. Sloan forecasts a day when competing blood substitutes are stocked in emergency rooms na tionwide. “We believe this will save lives.” ) ua ^tudy finds heart monitoring procedure risky ■ C' II I r ^ A r ^ f A D'l A I-*--* r-v i rr r-z-A /"»11 i ri t i Ia o c Fa h' t /"» i »* v i T o F t It It o i i o r' 1 o Vh - A catheterization procedure used by doctors to predict ( ft,l /w-I treatments may increase the chance of death inpatients. . in 404 Rudder. irts Student Coi >e a general me ments served Blocker. For i at 693-7590. ciety of Profess| "SPE): There vt ting with an ini fficers at 6: Free pizza ble, and all. enf] I University^ will be hip from 8:3d Kofdus. For it' id Matthew at Administration | ;ral meeting* r from Anderse] held at 7:3C For more i y Moer at 691 > is a Battalio 1 s non-profit si events and should be sii i three days and# CHICAGO (AP) — A heart monitoring procedure used a million or more times a year in this country to treat critically ill patients may actually be killing some of them, researchers say. Patients who underwent the procedure, called right heart catheterization, had a 21 percent higher risk of death in the succeeding 30 days, according to figures on 5,735 intensive-care unit patients at five U.S. medical centers. Right heart catheterization involves inserting a balloon-tipped catheter into a neck vein and guid ing it into the heart’s right atrium. The procedure al lows doctors to measure how the heart is perform ing and choose the right treatment. The procedure, in use for 25 years, is a central element of care for critically ill patients who are in shock or whose hearts are functioning abnormally. The annual cost associated with its use is more than $2 billion. Though some patients might benefit from the procedure, Dr. Alfred F. Connors Jr. of the Universi ty of Virginia said his study failed to identify any who did. “What we determined is that there clearly is an association between the use of right heart catheters and a higher rate of death,” Connors said. Connors offered some possible reasons why: Any time a foreign agent like a catheter is inserted into the body, there’s an infection risk. And the proce dure has been known to irritate the heart muscles and sometimes cause irregular heartbeats that could be fatal. Besides the higher death rate, his study linked the procedure to longer stays in the intensive-care unit and higher hospital costs. Connors and his colleagues said the research is the largest, most detailed study on right heart catheterization. It was published in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. “There’s no question that the health establish ment should pay attention to that,’’ said Dr. Claude Lenfant, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. But he said banning the procedure in the absence of further research is “perhaps a little bit jumping to conclusions.” In an accompanying JAMA editorial, two doctors said the findings are alarming enough to warrant ei ther immediate clinical trials by the institute or a gov ernment moratorium on the procedure. The Society of Critical Care Medicine, a 9,000- member group of doctors, nurses and others in volved in such care, called the study inconclusive. “Right heart catheterization is a safe and effec tive diagnostic procedure for many patients,” said Dr. John W. Hoyt, the society’s president. 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