From the Courier-Journal, 10-12007—ed.

IS SALINE A TREATMENT
FOR SPINE INJURIES?
By Patrick Howington

Emergency crews may one day have a potent new weapon against spinal-cord injuries—the one used on the Buffalo Bills’ Kevin Everett after a tackle seemed to leave him paralyzed. The novel treatment, injecting cold saline in his veins minutes after injury to lower his body temperature several degrees, has gotten some of the credit for his recovery.

Everett, 25, lay motionless on the field after driving his helmet into an opposing player on September 9. The next day his orthopedic surgeon called the injury “catastrophic” and said the chance of full recovery was bleak. But a day later, Everett awoke and moved his limbs, and doctors said he will walk again. He was moved to a Houston Rehabilitation center September 21.

“That it actually occurred in a human instead of just a lab rat is encouraging,” said David Allgood, 41, of Louisville, who was paralyzed at 16 in a diving accident. While cooling patients to limit damage from a spinal-cord injury is considered experimental, it could be routine one day if ongoing clinical trials replicate its success in animal tests, medical experts said.

“If my loved one or whatever had brain injury or stroke, I would think that mild cooling in the right hands would be a very good thing to do. But it’s not something that’s universally accepted,” said W. Dalton Dietrich, scientific director of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, at the University of Miami (Fla.). The project has pioneered research into cooling the body to lessen damage