Real-life Suspended Animation to Enter Human Trials

It's not the stuff of science fiction, meaning the Hypersleep capsules seen in the Alien series, but it is actual suspended animation nonetheless. Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) are set to begin human trials of a suspended animation surgical treatment, used to give doctors more time to perform operations.
Suspended animation is defined as the slowing of life processes by external means without termination. In the case of the research being conducted by both Harvard Medical School and MGH, in Boston, extreme hypothermia will be induced in trauma patients so that their bodies basically shut down during major surgery. The suspended animation technique will help reduce any damage done to organs while a patient's heart is not beating, also reducing the need for life support.

Dr Hasan Alam is leading the research at MGH. He said, "If you drop the body's core temperature and brain temperature down to 15 degrees C or 10 degrees C you are talking about 60 minutes and even 190 minutes of protection. By cooling rapidly in this fashion we can convert almost certain death into a 90 per cent survival rate."
To cool patients, doctors will replace their blood with cold saline solution. Cooling the body so much can keep organ or brain death from occurring due to a lack of oxygen. Additionally, because of the suspended animation effect, research so far has shown no ill effects on the brain from the procedure. Dr. John Elefteriades said,
"The body is essentially in 'real life' suspended animation with no pulse, no blood pressure, no electrical waves in the brain. We didn't find any evidence of functional impairment after the surgery."

We're not talking about putting astronauts into suspended animation and sending them off to Alpha Centauri, but eventually, that may come to pass.