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Mysteries of Cold Water Survival

Synopsis:
Four year old Jimmy Tontlewicz was pulled from the freezing waters of Lake Michigan after disappearing under the ice for more than a half hour. Thirty year old Murray Brown was found thirty minutes after his Jeep crashed upside down in a chilly creek near Las Vegas, Nevada. Read Full Synopsis...

 
 
Mysteries of Cold Water Survival (2000)
Producer: Deanie Wilcher
Writer: Kirk Streb & Mona Kanin
Full Credit List

 
 

No pulse, no heartbeat and body temperature 30 degrees below normal - hopeless situation?

Four year old Jimmy Tontlewicz was pulled from the freezing waters of Lake Michigan after disappearing under the ice for more than a half hour.

Thirty year old Murray Brown was found thirty minutes after his Jeep crashed upside down in a chilly creek near Las Vegas, Nevada.

Two and a half year old Michelle Funk was rescued from an icy river in Utah after being submerged for over an hour!

All survived!

Each case is a story of perseverance and medical ingenuity that will not only affect the patients and doctors, but will change medical history forever.

As neurosurgeon Julian Bailes likes to say, “There has never been a drug as protective as the cold. It’s harnessing the cold that’s the problem.” Dr. Bailes was one of the surgeons who revived Jimmy Tontlewicz. He is now helping develop a blood substitute which will enable surgeons to lower body temperatures and buy valuable time for operating on trauma victims with severe head injuries.

Fortunately for Murray Brown, his trauma center doctor, Larry Gentilello, is the inventor of the Continuous Arterial/Venous Rewarming Device, a machine designed specifically for reviving hypothermia patients. Murray was the first human to benefit from continuous arterial/venous rewarming.

Michelle Funk, may be the luckiest of all. No one else has ever drowned for over an hour and recovered. She was not only the first child, but also the first drowning victim to be revived using an extracorpeal rewarming technique pioneered by her ER doc, Robert Bulte, MD.

Drowning is not uncommon. It’s the second leading cause of death from injury among children in the U.S. Each year over 1,000 children drown and another 5,000 are hospitalized due to near drowning. One third of the children who nearly drown will suffer significant neurological
damage. The successful rescues and revivals of Jimmy, Murray and Michelle are already helping save the lives of others.

In each situation, the cold water helped. In each situation, emergency rescue teams performed heroic feats. In each situation, the attending emergency room doctors pushed the edge of medical knowledge and helped their patient overcome death.

How can anyone survive without breathing air for such a long period of time?
Why does extremely cold water make such a difference for survivors?
What have we learned from these extraordinary experiences and how is this knowledge helping save the lives of others?

In each situation, the drowning, discovery, rescue and medical intervention will be retold, chronologically, through a combination of stylized reenactments shot on film, news clips and first person testimonials. Through on camera interviews, we’ll meet the survivors and their families, as well as the rescue workers, paramedics, trauma center doctors and nurses, and medical specialists who helped save their lives.

As we move from one story to the next, we’ll compare the similarities and differences in each drowning, rescue and recovery. The doctors leading each medical team are pioneers and continue to pursue medical breakthroughs based on these life changing experiences. We’ll learn about the inspiration and history, as well as the science and medical foundations, behind these latest revival techniques.

We’ll also take a look into the future of trauma medicine and visit with scientists and doctors who are developing new procedures and devices to save lives.

 
 

Mysteries of Cold Water Survival
Cast and Credits

Click to show full credit list

 

 

 

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