NeuroNews — Ron Solar (ThermopeutiX, San Diego, USA) and colleagues report in EuroIntervention that the TwinFlo catheter (ThermopeutiX), in pigs, was associated with rapid, selective, deep cerebral hypothermia. They add that the catheter may “offer an improved method for neuroprotection during neurosurgery, cardiac arrest, acute stroke, and other ischaemic insult”. Solar talks to BIBA Briefings about the role of hypothermia in neuroprotection.
Why might hypothermia be an effective method of neuroprotection in patients with acute stroke?
There are many pathways that lead from arterial occlusion to cell death, and most of these pathways are metabolically controlled. In the laboratory, hypothermia has been shown to be the most robust method of neuroprotection to date because it acts on most, if not all of these pathways; as these pathways are metabolically controlled, lowering the temperature slows metabolism.