As Billy Crystal's eccentric, miracle-working hermit character told us in The Princess Bride, there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.
With Meredith's life hanging in the balance, Grey's Anatomy Insider's Seattle correspondent did some brief research to learn how dead our heroine actually is medically. What we learned, at least from the perspective of non-medical experts, is that the situation is grim, but hopeful. See below.
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When Grey's Anatomy left us hanging last week, Meredith was floating through Puget Sound.
This week, Meredith came out of the water, completely blue from the hypothermia and not breathing.
Also? She might be dead.
So how often do people really come back from the dead?
Well, Meredith Grey was completely under water for quite some time.
During that time, she most likely inhaled some water into her lungs, which can lead to asphyxiation and drowning. But the water Meredith was in was very cold, which actually increases her chances of survival.
According to Wikipedia's article on drowning, extremely cold water slows down the body's metabolism, leading to decreased levels of oxygen and blood flow. This can mean that a person who is submerged in cold water for an extended period of time can sort of come back to life.
On the other hand, such cold water led Meredith to become hypothermic, meaning her core body temperature is dangerously low - somewhere around 81 degrees - just before she went into the light and saw Denny and Dylan.
How often do people survive such a harrowing ordeal?
According to Princeton University studies, human beings who are in severe hypothermia will appear dead, but may actually be in a "metabolic icebox," meaning, they can be revived.
The heart is probably still beating, albeit very slowly, but if enough blood is circulating, it could be enough to keep the person alive until they can be warmed up.
Apparently, there have been cases where people who were hypothermic have been given CPR for up to three and half hours and have still recovered without any long-term damage.
In short, there's still hope for our girl, Meredith.
If you can look past the fact that she's the color of a Smurf right now and realize that the supposed best doctors in the country are all gathered around her hospital bed, you'll find a glimmer of hope that she'll pull through.
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18 Comments
February 19th, 2007 9:56 AM
You can't call time of death until the patient's core temp is normal, so they will continue to work on her (at the very minimum) until that happens. There is most definitely hope for our heroine.
February 19th, 2007 10:21 AM
The somewhat blunt rule for hypothermic patients is that you're not dead until you're warm and dead. Meredith's last stated temp was still only at 81 degrees; she's still got to warm up by 16 degrees to be accurately described as dead. So whatever she may be by the end of this week's show, she isn't dead yet.
February 19th, 2007 4:14 PM
I can't belive meredith dead its hard to belive Bye
February 19th, 2007 4:24 PM
she cannot be killed cause then derek is going to die cause she is death
February 19th, 2007 8:42 PM
Ok, so I've been reading everyone's comments about the is she/isn't she dead dilema and although everyone's reasearch is very impressive there is a minor yet very important detail that everyone has been overlooking with this entire Meredith situation. Yes, it is possible for people to survive hypothermia, obviously everyones reasearch confirms this, but if all of you go back to your Tivo'd and recorded episode of "Drowning on Dry Land" you will hear a very important word that everyone has seemed to been overlooking. This word comes from Dr. Addison Forbes Montgomery, when she says, "she's (Meredith Grey) in asystole." Now I am going to apologize for telling you all this cause i know you are not going to want to hear it. But I myself am an EMT and I've done my own research and experienced death in my line of work before, and when a patient is in asystole they are legally dead and it is slim to none that you can revive a patient from the state of asystole. I know this is a very pesimistic outlook for Meredith but in real life she would be dead. The only thing I can tell you is that you can get a patient back from asystole if hypothermia has been diagnosed as the cause, but there is only a fifteen minute period to do this within before there is permenant brain damage and at the end of the episode they stated that she was alrady down for twenty minutes. I too am hoping like everyone else that Meredith is not dead, but in real life her chances would be slim. But just in case you guys doubt the information I am telling you here is the excerpt and link about being in ayatole from wikipedia.org:
In medicine, asystole is a state of no cardiac electrical activity, hence no contractions of the myocardium and no cardiac output or blood flow. Asystole is one of the conditions required for a medical practitioner to certify death.
"In asystole, the heart will not respond to defibrillation because it is already depolarized, however some emergency physicians advocate the trial of defibrillation in case the rhythm is actually fine ventricular fibrillation, although no evidence exists to support the practice. Asystole is usually a confirmation of death as opposed to a heart rhythm to be treated, although a small minority of patients are successfully resuscitated, if the underlying cause is identified and treated immediately.
Possible underlying causes include the Hs and Ts.[1][2][3]
Hypovolemia
Hypoxia
Hydrogen ions (Acidosis)
Hypothermia
Hyperkalemia or Hypokalemia
Hypoglycemia
Tablets or Toxins (Drug overdose)
Cardiac Tamponade
Tension pneumothorax
Thrombosis (Myocardial infarction)
Thrombosis (Pulmonary embolism)
Trauma (Hypovolemia from blood loss)
While the heart is asystolic, there is no blood flow to the brain unless CPR or internal cardiac massage (when the chest is opened and the heart is manually compressed) is performed, and even then, it is still a small amount. After many emergency treatments have been applied but the heart is still unresponsive, it is time to consider pronouncing the patient dead. Even in the rare case that a rhythm should reappear, if asystole has persisted for fifteen minutes or more the brain will have been deprived of oxygen long enough to cause brain death."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asystole
Sorry guys :(
February 19th, 2007 10:09 PM
She cannot die on it>I mean,it is her show,so how are they going to put w/o her!?!?!?
February 20th, 2007 1:11 PM
:D you crack me up SeattleGrl.....the color of a smurf!!! LOL
February 20th, 2007 1:51 PM
I just have to say I have the same sort of parent issues that Meredith, no father and a mother who has been sick most of my life, and the thought of her dying in that water all alone, with no one knowing where she was would be the perfect end to her "perfect life" so therefore she cannot be dead. It is just too much. I think her mother will die. That is the death I am looking for. She will see her in the "light" and her mother will apologize and go on to the afterlife and Meredith will come back. Just my opinion.
February 20th, 2007 2:07 PM
As a med student, I understand what asystole is. But the show's title is "Some Kind of Miracle" and the fact remains that her core temp is below normal, so she cannot be declared dead. It would take a miracle for her to come back, and because this is TV I imagine that she will not only come back, but with little or no damage to any of her body systems.
February 20th, 2007 2:12 PM
Maybe a McMiracle will do it.