Every year, about 1.5 million Americans will suffer a traumatic brain injury. Dr. Bruce Spiess from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., said about 30 percent of those people will die.
"There is no magic pill or treatment for traumatic brain injury in terms of salvaging brain tissue. There is no way that we know of now to keep brain tissue alive," Speiss said.
Oxygen is a vital nutrient the brain can't survive without. When a brain is injured, swelling keeps the red blood cells from carrying enough oxygen to the brain. Spiess is studying a new way to deliver oxygen to vital organs called Oxycyte.
Oxycyte is a liquid, Teflon-like chemical that contains carbon and fluoride and can carry large amounts of oxygen. The particles in Oxycyte are about 1/50 to 1/100 the size of a red blood cell, so Oxycyte can carry oxygen to the brain when red blood cells can't get through.
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Brain repair
A new chemical could help repair brain tissue by delivering oxygen to the affected area.
 
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In a study of nine patients who suffered traumatic brain injury, Spiess and his team gave them Oxycyte. In less than an hour, the oxygen levels in their brains doubled to quadrupled.
"Some of the biochemical markers, they were tending to look like severe damage to the brain Within an hour to two hours after getting the Oxycyte, they came down almost completely to normal," Spiess said.
In severe brain injuries, one out of every three people will die. In Spiess' study, only two out of the nine patients died. The seven survivors all walked out of the hospital, and Spiess said they appear to be neurologically intact.
"We think [Oxycyte] could be a major breakthrough. The sooner you get the [Oxycyte] into the patient, the more brain tissue will survive," Spiess said.
Brain injuries aren't the only injuries that could benefit from Oxycyte. Early research by Spiess' team also shows the compound can preserve spinal cord function.
"If you have a spinal cord injury, the same situation goes on, that is, how much oxygen you get to those neurons in the immediate few hours after they have been injured as to how many neurons you can salvage," Spiess said.
Oxycyte could also preserve brain tissue after a stroke, and get needed oxygen to the heart during a heart attack.
