Cryonics Institute Case Report for Patient Number 138

CI patient #138 is a 74 year-old female who was pronounced legally dead in Washington State on July 20th, 2016. The patient was a CI Lifetime Member at the time of pronouncement.

One of the patient's sons, also a CI member, had contracted with a local funeral home to provide refrigeration and transportation services. The patient was pronounced in the late afternoon of July 20, 2016. Hospital staff then immediately cooled the patient's head and neck with water ice, administered heparin provided by the son and conducted chest compressions for eight minutes. The patient was then covered in additional water ice and transferred to the hospital's morgue. Later in the evening, the patient was transported to the funeral home's refrigeration facility where she remained until being flown to CI in the morning of July 22, 2016,

The patient arrived at the CI facility at 730pm eastern standard time on the 22nd of July, about 50 hours after the time of death. There were only freezer gel packs in with the patient and no water ice. Jim Walsh, CIs local cooperating funeral director was present for the perfusion and the perfusion began at 8:15pm. Due to the fact that the patient had kidney failure, liver failure and retained a large amount of fluids, along with the fact that it had been more than 48 hours after death, the perfusion efforts were focused on the head and brain.

The perfusion was completed at 9:10pm. During the perfusion there were 4 liters of 30% Eg solution used and 13 liters of 70% VM1 solutions used. The final refractive index of the effluents exiting the right jugular vein was 1.4182. Average perfusion pressure was 136mm and the average flow rate was .49 liters per minute. There was little flow through the left side of the brain, possibly due to a previous injury to the brain stem, and no measurements were able to be taken from the left jugular vein. There was a small amount of bronzing on the left side of the head and face. Considerable dehydration of the right side of the head and face was noted along with a bronzing color of the skin. Slight edema was noted at the end of the perfusion.

The patient was then placed in the computer controlled cooling chamber to cool to liquid nitrogen temperature. The human vitrification program was selected and the time needed to cool the patient to liquid nitrogen temperature was five days and 14 hours. The patient was then placed in a cryostat for long-term cryonic storage.