The line between life and death may become a lot blurrier for trauma patients if a medical team from the University of Pittsburg Medical Center Presbyterian Hospital is successful in its attempt to give doctors more time to treat injuries that would otherwise result in death.

Led by UPMCP surgeon Samuel Tisherman, the groundbreaking medical trial would test a way to save people in critical condition by literally placing their bodies in a state of suspension, somewhere between life and death.

"We are suspending life, but we don't like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction," Tisherman told members of the media, "so, we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation."

The first-of-its-kind process involves quickly removing all of a patient's blood, draining it from the body and replacing it with a saline solution that stops almost all cellular activity -- a procedure similar to inducing hypothermia.

Cells at lower temperatures need less oxygen to perform chemical reactions, so an entire body can be cooled and kept technically alive for much longer for longer periods of time than it would be possible to maintain a body at the normal temperature of 98.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

To test the suspension approach animation method, doctors at UPMCP will need to first locate a patient who has suffered cardiac arrest after an injury like a gunshot wound and who hasn't responded to attempts to restart their heart.

At that point, a saline solution will first be pumped to their heart and brain, then eventually into the entire body.

That means at the time of operation, the patient will be clinically dead, having no blood in the body, no brain activity and no breathing. Still, even in that state, metabolic cells produce energy at a very slow rate, a process called anaerobic glycolysis that can keep cells alive for hours.

The surgeons involved in the procedure would have an approximate window of two hours to repair the patient's injuries, drain the saline solution and fill the body back up with its blood. If everything is successful, the heart would restart slowly, though an electrical jump start might be needed.

Back in 2002, a similar suspension procedure was tested on pigs, some of which successfully survived the trial without any harm.

But trying out the technique on humans is going to face ethical obstacles from the get-go, since the participants recruited for the trails will be delivered directly from the emergency room, without any opportunity for the patient or their families to give consent.

Nonetheless, the United States Food and Drug Administration is allowing the testing to go forward with the rational the patients in question would probably not survive their injuries and only traditional medical treatment.