New technology at WHC saves man's life

Larry Jorgensen, suffered a heart attach and was the first patient to benefit from the Woodland Memorial Hospital's new Medivance Artic Sun machine, a therapeutic hypothermia-inducing device.

By slowing down the body through extreme cold, doctors can slow the consumption of oxygen by less essential body parts and keep brain tissue alive - tissue impossible to heal or replace once it dies.

Without the therapy, cardiac arrest survivors may experience long-term problems with memory or lose significant parts of their brain, a fate Jorgensen was spared.

To read the story published in the Daily Democrat on Sunday, November 7, 2010, click here.