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Inhaled Hydrogen Could Protect the Brain During Heart-Lung Bypass:
Newborns with life-threatening congenital heart disease often undergo open-heart surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass, which carries a risk of damaging the brain. Critically ill newborns who are placed on ECMO are at even higher risk for brain injury. Hypothermia, or cooling the body, can improve neurologic outcomes, but has limitations.
[...] When infants are placed on bypass or ECMO, blood flow is interrupted, causing temporary hypoxia, or low-oxygen conditions. The brain, a heavy oxygen user, suffers the most from oxygen deprivation. But it's when blood flow is restored and oxygen is reintroduced that the real damage occurs. Formerly oxygen-deprived cells respond to the sudden influx by forming toxic chemicals known as reactive oxygen species, which damages DNA and cell membranes.
"During the reperfusion process, the cell mitochondria overreact and end up using oxygen to injure themselves," explains John Kheir, MD, a cardiologist in Boston Children's Hospital's Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.
The body tries to scavenge these chemicals, but they can overwhelm the scavenging system and injure the tissue. When this occurs in the brain, it can cause neurologic impairment.
[...] As described today in the journal JACC: Basic to Translational Medicine, the team added 2.4 percent hydrogen gas to the animals' usual ventilation gases during and after arrested blood flow and hypoxia. Compared with controls, the treated animals did significantly better on neurologic evaluations. They had fewer seizures, smaller areas of tissue injury on brain MRI and decreased chemical markers of brain and kidney injury in their blood.
Journal Reference:
Alexis R. Cole, et al. Perioperatively Inhaled Hydrogen Gas Diminishes Neurologic Injury Following Experimental Circulatory Arrest in Swine. JACC: Basic to Translational Science, 2019; DOI: 10.1016/j.jacbts.2018.11.006
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @09:01PM (9 children)
Do not smoke while receiving your open-heart surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass.
Hydrogen is also used when diving down way beyond normal, about a kilometer. In that case it is over 95% hydrogen. Again, NO SMOKING. Do not smoke while setting depth records.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday May 02 2019, @09:20PM (4 children)
I thought that was helium when doing very deep dives? Is there a depth where you have to switch to hydrogen?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @10:18PM
You need it past about 1500 feet.
https://johnclarkeonline.com/2011/11/15/diving-with-hydrogen-%E2%80%93-it%E2%80%99s-a-gas/ [johnclarkeonline.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrox_(breathing_gas) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Friday May 03 2019, @03:17AM (2 children)
With extremely deep dives you get into exotic gas mixes that can include hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen. The partial pressure of each has to be managed to avoid toxicity. e.g. 100% oxygen is harmful at 2 atmospheres. (below 33 feet) In 4 atmospheres (100 feet) nitrogen is an anesthetic. Beyond 400 feet (13 atmospheres) Helium mixtures cause some poorly understood nervous system issues. Hydrogen mixtures also have a very poorly understood anesthetic effect too, but at much higher partial pressures than Nitrogen. It's also flammable or explosive in several mixture ranges, another strong negative. Ironically both Hydrogen and Helium increase the risk of hypothermia, as both are more effective than air for moving heat.
My impression from reading on this topic that exotic gas diving research attracts people with an extremely high risk tolerance, and a lot of them have died to teach us what we know.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday May 03 2019, @02:39PM (1 child)
Breathing a mix of oxygen and hydrogen. That sounds rather scary. Thanks for the info.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday May 03 2019, @06:46PM
It's the go-to solution if you have to work below 500 feet.
As ROVs get better the need to do that has decreased. That's a good thing, IMHO.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday May 02 2019, @10:11PM (1 child)
Well I'll be damned... I knew about heliox, but not Hydrogen-Oxygen.
The person who invented/discovered it died from it, so... Use at your own risk??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @10:25PM
I picture him in a diving bell on the sea floor, with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, wrestling his diving buddy for control of a lighter. He gains control, then flicks the wheel while his diving buddy gives one last blood-curdling scream.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @10:29PM
I've taken a break in the middle of a medical procedure to have a smoke with them out back. It made it all much more pleasant honestly.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday May 03 2019, @01:48AM
Fortunately, given the depth it's used for, it doesn't have enough oxygen in it to explode. Humans only need an oxygen partial pressure of 0.20 ATM no matter the total pressure.
But in general, diving is a terrible time to load up on carbon monoxide.