Miracle Baby Undergoes Hypothermia, Cheats Death
Updated: 15 hours 28 minutes ago
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Katie Drummond Contributor
AOL News
(March 12) -- Bronson Staker was only 17 months old when he was pronounced dead in a Utah hospital. But he's full of life today, thanks to an experimental procedure.
Bronson's remarkable ordeal started at the Stakers' home in Salt Lake City. While giving Bronson a bath, his mother, Sara, briefly left the room, distracted by one of her son's siblings. When she came back, Bronson was lying face down in the tub.
Staker tried CPR while she waited for paramedics, but neither she nor an EMS team could revive him. Bronson was rushed to the hospital and declared dead on arrival.
Still, doctors wouldn't give up without one final try: therapeutic hypothermia.
It's a technique that's gaining momentum. Usually, therapeutic hypothermia is used after a patient suffers cardiac arrest. The brain is deprived of oxygen and the heart stops beating. A patient is all but dead, much like Bronson.
If, and when, the heart starts to beat, oxygen floods the brain in an effort to restore function. That can overwhelm cells and result in cognitive and physical impairment.
Therapeutic hypothermia works by slowing down the body's natural recovery process.
Bronson's tiny body was cooled to 91 degrees, 8 below normal, and he was induced into a coma to prevent brain swelling. Two entire weeks would pass before doctors would slowly reheat, and then awaken, the child.
They warned his parents that Bronson might have regressed in cognitive and physical development -- if he woke up at all.
"We had been told we would probably take home a 16-month-old newborn,"
Staker told "The Today Show" this morning. "We had been told probably it would be months of rehab, maybe even years."
Doctors advised Staker and her husband, Matt, to prepare themselves for lifelong medical treatment and monitoring, and even the possibility that Bronson would suffer permanent damage.
What doctors didn't foresee was a complete recovery. But that's exactly what happened: A day after being revived, Bronson was walking. Now six weeks later, the Stakers' son is showing no signs of physical or cognitive delay or impairment.
Bronson's story is exceedingly rare, but therapeutic hypothermia has been successfully used before to treat children who've drowned.
A 2009 review of the method in the Journal of Neurotrauma predicts that therapeutic hypothermia will soon have "broad applications" in pediatric medicine.
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