When Glenn Ordway's daughter Mia was born, he and wife Sarah faced the traumatic possibility that she could have suffered permanent brain damage.
During birth at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston, Sarah suffered complications that deprived Mia of oxygen and left her without heartbeat for over 20 minutes. Doctors feared this may have left Mia with a lifetime of complications.
That is until Cincinnati Sub-Zero's (CSZ) cooling technology entered the picture.
The Ordways were fortunate. Although BWH didn't have this technology on site, the nearby Boston Children's Hospital did.
Ordway, a celebrated Boston sportscaster on WEEI radio, credits CSZ's cooling therapy with saving baby Mia.
To express their gratitude and raise awareness of CSZ's life-saving technology, the Ordways have just launched The Miracle Mia Foundation following Mia's first birthday on February 28, 2009. They've also donated a CSZ cooling device to Bigham and Woman's Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and plan to donate more to other Boston area hospitals in the future.
The chance to "impact a baby's life for the rest of their life was really the moving part with Glenn and Sarah," says Cincinnati Sub-Zero president and CEO Steven Berke.
Berke wasn't actually aware of what happened in Boston until he received an email from Sarah requesting the chance to thank someone in CSZ's senior management.
A phone call followed the email. During the course of their lively conversation, Berke says he emphasized to Sarah that "it's not about me and senior management. It's about the whole company, all the people. We all have an impact."
Berke then pitched the idea that Sarah come, on CSZ's dime, to thank all employees at the following quarterly company-wide meeting.
"So she came and it was kind of a surprise to all the employees," Berke says.
After playing a news clip of the Ordway's story done in Boston, Sarah then came before the employees and thanked everybody.
Glenn couldn't make it that time, as it was in the height of football season, but he did make it, with Sarah, to the company's national sales meeting earlier this year in New Orleans to express his thanks.
At the heart of the Ordway's story lies a technology that has been quietly saving lives for years.
CSZ's cooling technology induces a state of hypothermia in patients who have suffered stroke, cardiac arrest and a host of other life-threatening situations that may cause brain damage.
Berke explains that if this treatment is underway within four to six hours of the event, brain damage can sometimes be prevented.
Without cooling therapy, people who experience cardiac arrest only stand a four to six percent chance of emerging without brain damage. But with induced hypothermia, they have a 40 to 60 percent chance of full recovery.
Although Mia Ordway's case is a well publicized, heart-warming example, CSZ's medical cooling technology saves lives of all ages.
Even Berke's own mother benefited from this cooling treatment following a stroke.
"My mom, who is Chairman of the Board and owns the majority of the shares, had a stroke a few years ago," Berke says. After convincing a young internist to give cooling therapy a try, her "vital signs came back to normal, her speech was a lot more clear and she was a lot more alert."
Although this is not yet standard practice for stroke victims, Berke says that studies are being done now to determine if it should be.
Berke is enthusiastic about "giving these people a chance to live a normal life afterwards."
It's about time awareness is raised of this technology and its potential to save lives.
To learn more about CSZ's innovative cooling technology, in both its medical and industrial capacities, visit here.
Writer: Jonathan DeHart
Source: Steven Berke, Cincinnati Sub-Zero
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