A new device aims to reduce the risk of brain damage by providing on-the-spot cooling in emergency situations

Keeping a cool head, in every sense, could save lives and reduce the risk of brain damage in an emergency.

Now, hoping to mirror the success of the defibrillator in cardiac arrest situations, a Dundalk-based company has secured an Irish patent for a portable cooling instrument attached to a helmet device that would allow paramedics to provide on-the-spot, highly controlled brain cooling.

“Medical evidence suggests that if action is taken quickly enough, cooling the brain by just one degree can reduce swelling after a brain injury and limit the loss of neurologic function in the case of an acute stroke, cardiac arrest or where newborns are deprived of oxygen,” says Tom Mears, managing director and founder of Eurolec Instrumentation .

The company’s cooling know-how comes from one its early products – a calibration device capable of providing precise heating and cooling between temperatures of -20 and 85, enabling industrial customers to check the accuracy of their thermometers.

The Eureka moment came after reading a New Scientist article on the benefits of brain cooling. “It was a case of, ‘We’ve got the technology!’” he says.

After some initial market research, the company got to work on developing a prototype and filing for a patent. That process took about 18 months, and Mears describes it as being “fairly intensive for a small company”.

Established in 1998, Eurolec currently employs seven people; over 60 per cent of its sales are exported.

“For the preliminary discussion with a patent attorney and the associated search, you are probably talking ballpark around €5,000, and that’s just the beginning,” he says. “You are talking in very detailed legalistic terminology, which is virtually like a new language, and we had to submit drawings and explain the whole logic of the process and how it worked.”

Proving the patent hinged on what was distinctively different about Cool Head compared with other systems already out there.

Differentiation

“That ranged from fairly basic crushed ice in bags or cooling gel packs being placed on the person’s head to, in some cases, the kind of technology you’d see in the B-quality movies of the 1950s, whereby cool air or cooling liquid would be circulated through virtually a whole spacesuit,” says Mears.

While the latter approach proved quite effective, it could only be done in hospital situations, and it also posed risks by cooling other body organs.

An important point of differentiation for the Cool Head device is that it doesn’t depend on mains electricity. It can be powered from a one-hour rechargeable battery and from a standard 12V paramedical vehicle source.

This means that continuous cooling is available from the earliest point of intervention at the scene of the incident right through to a hospital intensive care unit.

Another distinctive feature is that it can provide warming. “Neurosurgeons have told us that it’s very important for the brain to be re-warmed again on a very gradual, incremental basis. A lot of devices purely apply cooling jets of air or, in some cases, insert cooling chemicals up through the nasal passages. They can’t warm,” explains Mears.

Now in possession of a patent, Eurolec isn’t cracking open the Champagne just yet. Mears admits that medical devices are a new departure for the company, and next on his agenda will be getting clinical data, backed by a serious research institute, to attract a partner.

“We have done in-house testing with the helmet in place, measuring the temperature of the tympanic membrane in the ear, which seems to be the closest one could get to the brain temperature on a simulated basis. But it’s not quite the real thing,“ he acknowledges.

“Some discussions had pointed to invasive testing, which would require regulatory oversight, as the next step, but we felt that was beyond our financial resources and scope.”

Electrical activity

Instead Eurolec has developed an associated company, Oriel Medical devices, and commissioned the Neuroscience Department at Trinity College Dublin to carry out non-invasive testing, supported by a €5,000 grant from Enterprise Ireland.

The team, headed by Prof Shane O’Mara, is using EEG sensors to explore changes in the pattern of electrical activity in the brain with changing temperature. This, coupled with motor and cognitive tests with different volunteers while the cooling helmet is in place, should allow them to make certain deductions on the effectiveness of the device.

“It’s not as quantifiable as sticking a temperature probe into someone’s skull with a Black and Decker,” says Mears. “But it seems to be close to the next best thing.“

Anxiously awaiting the results, he envisages numerous other possibilities for the device. The addition of different snap-fit attachments could allow sports organisations and racehorse owners to apply heating and cooling to soft tissue injuries or to improve temperature control during the transfer of human organs harvested for transplantation.