The first attempt at human suspended animation will happen at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, although the end objective is to save lives and not to travel from one planet to another. This particular technique will be used on 10 patients whose wounds would be considered as lethal, in order to help the surgeon have more time to save the life of the victim. It will work through the cooling of the body without applying an external temperature change.
Basically, all of the patient’s blood will be removed, and in place of the blood would be a cold saline solution. Not only does this cool down the body, it will also do away with the normal need for oxygen, without actually affecting the brain of the patient at the end of it all.
Dr. Samuel Tisherman, the surgeon who will lead the trial, shared, “We are suspending life, but we don’t like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction. So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation.”