A-2157, a confidential neuro member, was declared legally dead on March 25, 2014 and the same day became Alcor’s 122nd patient. Alcor received a Telemed alert on March 14, 2014. The member had stage 4 colon cancer and multiple issues including atrial fibrillation and jaundice. On March 1 a nurse practitioner said they were planning on discharging him to in-home hospice care. Her prognostication was that he may have between 3 and 12 days remaining before his health failed. That turned out to be accurate.

On March 18 the decision was made to relocate the member to Scottsdale so as to minimize transport time and to enable us to avoid remote blood washout and go straight to cryoprotection. Since Medical Response Director Aaron Drake would be out of the country, we asked Suspended Animation to cover the case starting at noon on Friday 21.

The hospice in Scottsdale gave the green light to accept our member on March 19. He arrived in Arizona from California on Sunday March 23 via air ambulance. Steve Graber and Max More stood watch during the afternoon and evening until the first members of the SA team arrived and took over. At the hospice he was monitored with remote telemetry to provide 24/7 cardiac monitoring and an adjacent room was provided to position the stabilization equipment.

A-2157 arrested at 4:24 PM on March 25, 2014. The patient arrived at Alcor at 5:23 PM. Seven people contributed to the procedures in the operating room, where perfusion of the patient was started at 7:43 PM and completed at 10:50 PM. Perfusion appears to have been highly effective, even though an unusually small amount of cryoprotectant was used, although we will be able to check on that after performing a CT scan.