What is respiratory hypothermia?
Respiratory hypothermia — by slowly lowering the body temperature by asphyxia in a tightly sealed vessel (hypercapnic hypoxia) at a low ambient temperature, a physiological state resembling lethargy can be induced 1.
Previous attempts to rewarm deeply cooled rats were regularly unsuccessful, and it was concluded by the German physiologists that below 15°C, non-hibernating animals could not be successfully reanimated. Giaja’s Ph.D. student, Radoslav Andjus (1926-2003), was the first to reanimate a rat that was in deep hypothermia, with a colonic temperature of 0 to 2°C (Andjus, 1953). The closed vessel method of cooling animals, in which hypoxia and hypercapnia are combined, initiated an anecdote about this method introduced by Giaja 2.