CRYONICS-- SA Inc-- newsletter-- 00-- Feb. 14, 2007

Here the emailed newsletter I got from SA Inc--

QUOTE

Dear Readers,

We hope your 2008 is off to a great start!
Below you'll find a brief update on our activities at Suspended
Animation closing out 2007 and some of what we are looking forward to
in
2008.

Best regards,

Catherine

Catherine Baldwin
General Manager
Suspended Animation, Inc.


NEW CLIENTS

Suspended Animation added eight new clients in the last Quarter of 2007
and our 58th Standby client joined us this month. Welcome aboard
everyone!


NEW BOARD MEMBER

Suspended Animation is pleased to announce that Steve Harris, M.D., has
joined our Board of Directors. Dr. Harris, who is President of Critical
Care Research, has been a medical advisor and consultant for Suspended
Animation for a number of years and we are glad have him as a Director.
His biosketch is posted on the Suspended Animation website.


NEW TRAINING AND SIMULATION DEVELOPMENT

In December, Suspended Animation began developing a porcine cadaver
training model for cryonics procedures. The first step toward
developing
the model was to test it using the human protocol. The SA staff and
three consultants used SA's E450 transport vehicle to perform a 27-hour
standby, stabilization and transport exercise about 400 miles from the
SA facility. After an overnight standby, "the patient" was pronounced
in
the late morning. He was then cooled with ice, intubated and
ventilated,
medications were administered through an IV line, chest compressions
were provided by the AutoPulse, and the femoral artery and vein were
cut-down and cannulated, followed by blood washout using the ATP. Total
procedural time before washout and transport could begin was 45
minutes.
With more practice, we hope to reduce that time significantly. A few
hitches and glitches revealed that some different sized instruments and
cannulae will be necessary to make the model practical to use. Overall,
working on a cadaver provides a more realistic, and therefore more
valuable, training experience. We are looking forward to our next test
run in the first Quarter of 2008.


MORE TRAINING

Under our new training schedule, Suspended Animation held three
training
sessions: Basic Life Support (BLS) certification training, an Air
Transportable Perfusion (ATP) kit training and a practical update
clinic
on intubation, IV line setting and medication administration.

SA staff member Kelly Kingston has begun her EMT training program and
will finish up in May.


NEW CONSULTANTS

To help us with our training and porcine cadaver model development,
Suspended Animation has recruited two new consultants: Prudence Ogden,
RN, a thirty year nursing veteran from a local hospital, and Dan
Rothen,
DVM, a local clinical veterinarian. Michelle Fry, EMT, Standby Team
member, and long-time cryonics professional, has also been working with
SA on the vehicle requirements and training.


E450 TRANSPORT VEHICLE

After some design and specification reviews, work continues on the E450
transport vehicle. Water and waste tanks have been installed for the
sink. A custom, sliding mount surgical light has been installed. A new
roll-up door and lift gate have been added at the rear of the vehicle
for patient ingress and egress. Specialty cabinets, designed for use in
ambulances, are on order.


EZ IO® DEVICE

Suspended Animation has purchased a new interosseous infusion device
for
our Standby kits called the EZ IO®. The device inserts a hollow needle
into a bone in the lower leg (tibia) or the upper arm (humerus), that
can be used to rapidly administer fluids and medications. Many EMS
departments and the EMT's on our standby team now use the EZ IO®
instead
of, or in addition to, a standard, peripheral intravenous (IV) line to
provide vascular access. The device is particularly helpful in people,
like cryonics patients, who may have conditions that make placing a
needle in a peripheral vein difficult. The EZ IO® supplements our
current complement of both F.A.S.T. sternal interosseous device and our
standard peripheral IV kits. Training on the use of EZ IO® will take
place in March.


PORTABLE PARTIAL LIQUID VENTILATION (PPLV)

For more than a year, Suspended Animation has been developing and
testing a portable partial liquid ventilation (PPLV) device for
cryonics. The purpose of partial liquid ventilation is to cool the
patient by
using the lungs as a heat exchanger. A mixture of gas and chilled
breathable liquid will be infused into the lungs of a human patient by
the equipment we have developed, while cardiopulmonary support will
continue to circulate the blood. The blood is cooled by the chilled
liquid in the lungs, and then circulates up to the brain. A series of
experiments (reported by Steve Harris MD at the 2007 Alcor Conference)
has confirmed that our current cooling rates are more than twice as
fast
as those achieved previously by any configuration of liquid
ventilation,
and are much faster than rates achieved by any other type of cooling
procedure, short of cooling the blood directly during extracorporeal
bypass.

Version 2 of the equipment is a relatively bulky, wheeled standalone
unit designed to be used alongside an ice bath, and its infusion
reservoir and infusion pump are not sized for human lung capacity. For
a
local case, the unit could be used and would provide much faster
cooling
than simply packing the patient in ice, but the goal is to have a
better, human-specific version for use in the field.

In October and November of 2007, work began on Version 3 of the
equipment. More streamlined, it's now designed to rest on the side
rails
of a Suspended Animation ice bath but can also be used on a standalone
basis. The control electronics have been compressed to fit inside the
lid of a Pelican-brand transport container. The infusion and suction
pumps have been relocated in a detachable, space-efficient compartment.
A new, compact pinch-valve design has been developed to simplify flow
control.

With a capacity of 30 amp-hours, the onboard 12-volt batteries can run
the pumps for as long as an hour. It can also run from any external
12-volt source such as a car battery.

Testing of the Version 3 is expected to begin in late February.


WEST COAST WORKSHOP

In addition to maintaining the Dodge Sprinter transport vehicle and an
air transportable standby kit in California, in January 2008 Suspended
Animation rented a 1500-square-foot workshop/office facility in the
Rancho Cucamonga area, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles. The workshop
is conveniently located near existing laboratories of Critical Care
Research and 21st Century Medicine. This location facilitates
communication with advisors at the laboratories as well as rapid
testing
of equipment, like the PLV. This location will also be especially
important as we ramp up development of our capabilities related to
field
vitrification.


FIELD VITRIFICATION

In November a proposal was drafted and circulated among advisors as a
first step toward establishing a development project for field
vitrification. This is our most ambitious development project for 2008
but does not yet have a target date for completion.

Under SA's current protocol, as soon as initial stabilization
procedures
have been completed, a patient is perfused with organ preservation
solution and then transported, packed with ice, to the cryonics
organization for cryoprotective perfusion, vitrification and storage.
The organ preservation solution used by Suspended Animation (which is
the same as that used by Alcor) may not prevent brain injury over
extended periods of time; consequently, the possibility of delays
during
transport has always been cause for concern. Transporting a patient at
a
much lower temperature should afford greater protection for the brain,
but to enable this, vitrification of the patient is necessary to
prevent
formation of ice. This means that, in cases where the patient may have
an extended transport to the cryonics facility, cryoprotective
perfusion
would have to be performed in the field, near the place of
pronouncement, instead of later, at the cryonics facility.

This entails several challenges. In particular, cryoprotective
perfusion
has never been done outside of a properly equipped operating room, and
intermediate-temperature transport (around -130 degrees Celsius) of a
cryonics patient has not been attempted. (Transport of a patient
immersed in liquid nitrogen after cryoprotective perfusion in a remote
location is not currently considered practical mainly because cooling
to
liquid nitrogen temperature would require about one week. Therefore,
intermediate-temperature transport will be necessary.)

SA proposes to develop field vitrification in stages. Initially,
equipment will be designed and built for use in our facility in Florida
and possibly in a participating laboratory in California. We expect to
build a combined surgical/cooldown unit for this purpose. Subsequently,
a new vehicle will be acquired for remote deployment of the equipment
that has been developed for use in our facility.

Work associated with this project will be performed at our new workshop
in California as well as at our facilities in Florida.

UNQUOTE