The 12 boys rescued from a Thai cave were drugged with ketamine and rendered unconscious before their risky dives. So was their soccer coach.
In a letter published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the medical professionals responsible for masterminding the safe extraction of the trapped team revealed the evacuees were anesthetized with ketamine as they “were swum out of the cave wearing poorly fitting wet suits in cold water.”
This photo from video released via the Thai Navy SEAL Facebook page shows rescuers holding one of the 12 boys inside the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in northern Thailand. , a University of Chicago anesthesiologist, was also awed by the medical aspects of the rescue. To escape, one boy at a time would have to be squired through a treacherous maze of passageways filled with murky water of unpredictable depth. Awhile making the crossing, and the physical and mental well-being of the boys was questionable. The boys would need to breathe on their own, and possibly cooperate with instructions as they were passed from rescuer to rescuer. And they could not panic, since each step of the relay was planned with military precision.
Upon their emergence from the Tham Luang cave complex on July 8, the first four evacuees had their full-face masks replaced with oxygen masks that fit more loosely. They were also fitted with sunglasses to protect eyes that had not been exposed to the sun in more than two weeks.
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