Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation

In EPR, blood is replaced by a saline solution, and the patient is cooled into a suspended state where metabolism is slowed and brain activity ceases.

The trial procedure involves rapidly inducing profound hypothermia (10 °C) with an aortic flush in trauma victims that have suffered cardiac arrest and failed standard resuscitative efforts.

[4] New Scientist credits the first demonstration of "swiftly replacing blood with salt water – cooling and effectively 'killing them' to save them" to trials on pigs by Peter Rhee and colleagues at the University of Arizona in 2000.

EPR is an experimental technique that attempts to improve the odds of survival by dropping the patient's temperature to approximately 10 °C, giving the doctor more time to find and stop the source of the bleeding before brain death occurs.

[7] Where community consent is obtained, as of 2014, the procedure can only be performed on patients 18 to 65 years old who have a penetrating wound, go into cardiac arrest within five minutes of arrival, and fail to respond to ordinary resuscitation efforts.

Describing the successful operation as "a little surreal," Professor Tisherman in November 2019 told how he removed the patient's blood and replaced with ice-cold saline solution.

The patient, technically dead at this point, was removed from the cooling system and taken to an operating theatre for a two-hour surgical procedure before having their blood restored and being warmed to the normal temperature of 37C.