The MLSS was developed prior to its coming to exist at Suspended Animation (SA.) It was provided SA by the Life Extension Foundation of Fort Lauderdale, who is the primary financial investor in SA. SA has modified it extensively and added features. The cart consists of several elements, including:

The Ice bath uses an ice/water mixture to provide efficient cooling of the patient’s skin that cannot be obtained through ice bags, due to their poor skin contact. The bath has a cutout to enable a Michigan Instruments Thumper to be positioned over the chest of the patient. A common bilge pump provides water circulation over the patient (currently being reworked). In the bottom of the bath are located copper pipes that are used to provide chill water for the bypass system described below.

The Michigan instruments push-pull Thumper provides two functions, circulation and respiration. The thumper provides five chest compressions and then sends a burst of O2 to the patient’s intubation tube for respiration. An SA added airway control valve shuts off the airway during the heart compressions, improving Thumper efficiency significantly. The Thumper is pneumatically driven using O2 from an onboard tank or air from a portable compressor.

A major benefit of the thumper is circulation of cold blood from the skin to the brain and body core. Without this blood circulation, cooling via ice/water would be significantly less effective. The thumper also ensures that medications introduced into the patient are circulated throughout the body.

Located below the ice bath is the bypass circulation system. This system consists of a calibrated roller style cardio pump, tubing, bypass reservoir, Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenator (ECMO), heat exchanger, filters, and sensors. The system has three operating modes. In the first mode, the system pumps MHP washout fluid from an external reservoir through the ECMO (for oxygenation) and heat exchanger (cooling it to near freezing) and then through the filter/bubble trap into the patient via fem-fem bypass and finally into a waste collection bag. In this mode the unit provides body washout. In the second mode, after washout is complete, the circulation loop is closed back into the bypass reservoir so that washout fluid is passed trough the ECMO and heat exchanger into the patient and back again in a closed loop. This mode is used to cool the patient to just above the ice point. Alternatively, in a third mode, the bypass system can be used in traditional bypass mode, where blood is pumped through the ECMO for oxygenation and then back into the body for metabolic support. Cooling for the heat exchanger is provided by a SA added chill loop that pumps water from the secondary of the heat exchanger through copper tubes in the ice bath and back to the heat exchanger.

The bypass system can also be used to perfuse the body or head through the carotids in the single pass CI protocol.

Also below the ice bath is housed a complete vacuum suction system, oxygen bottles to drive the thumper and provide O2 for the ECMO, a pulse oximeter, and readouts for the multiple temperature probes in the patient and perfusion line.

The cart has dual 12 volt batteries to power the pumps and a battery charger. Storage for surgical and other supplies is also provided in the cart.

SA is in the process of further modifying the system:

The MLSS is sufficiently portable to be used wherever SA can support patient transport using its ambulance or a truck dispatched from Boca Raton. However, this unit is not air transportable. SA is in the process of fabricating an air transportable unit that has most of the features of the MLSS, but is contained in boxes that can be air transported as luggage. This unit will be available in about 45 days.