Pyr0Duck
Pyr0Duck t1_iv93nks wrote
Reply to During heart transplanting, how does the body survive before the heart is replaced? by harkhinz
Just to add to what has already been said, I actually got to meet Dr. Russell Nelson (one of the inventors of the first successful heart and lung machine) and he mentioned that one of the issues was getting the heart to stop in a way that could be restarted later after they did repairs on the heart. So, he and his team figured out that you could hook up the patient to the machine and then inject the heart with a solution of potassium chloride to stop the heart. Once the heart stops, they turned on the machine and then did repairs on the stopped heart. Once the repairs had been done, they turned off the heart and lung machine and then quickly injected the heart with a solution of sodium chloride to get the repaired heart to start up again.
Just as an interesting side fact about Dr. Nelson, he told me that he got the idea on how to stop the heart and then restart it from reading the scriptures.
Pyr0Duck t1_ivafoih wrote
Reply to comment by caspy7 in During heart transplanting, how does the body survive before the heart is replaced? by harkhinz
Yes, he did. But I can't remember the specific verses. It was actually an interesting story though. He said that when he was in medical school, it was taught that open heart surgery was impossible because the heart would stop as soon as it was touched. However, as he started his medical career, they discovered in animals that the heart could continue beating even if it was touched. So, as he was thinking about this, he was reading the scriptures and came across a scripture that essentially said that everything in the world is given a law and that even the plants and animals must abide by these laws. After reading that, he said that he felt impressed that if everything has a law, then the beating heart must also follow some laws or "rules". So, he began researching how muscles know when to contract, etc. and found that too much potassium tells the muscle to stop. However, once the potassium levels dropped, the muscle would start again. He said he had this sudden thought that that was the "law given to the heart" and so he started trying out this method. It ended up working really well and was key to making the heart and lung machine work in practice.