Hoose also raised questions about epinephrine. Prosecutors accuse Gilbert of injecting her patients, who had chronic diseases but were not in an acute crises, with epinephrine, causing the sudden cardiac arrests. Epinephrine, is the chemical equivalent of adrenaline. Prosecutors claim that epinephrine given to a person with a normal beating heart causes it to race out of control then stop. But Rocco said he never saw a patient with a normal heart be given epinephrine.
Nobody really knows how epinephrine affects a normal heart.
Rocco said one thing that is known about epinephrine is that it metabolizes or breaks down in the body very quickly. He said that 50 percent of a dose is broken down within two minutes of the injection.