Therapeutic Hypothermia for Cardiac Arrest

In the era before Therapeutic Hypothermia (TH) was recommended and used as a therapeutic modality for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients, reported data suggests in-hospital mortality exceeded 58%.[1,2,3,4,5,6] Mortality after a sudden and unexpected cardiac arrest (CA) is high, and the chance of survival to hospital discharge has, until recently, remained unchanged.[7] In one report, OHCA in the U.S. has a mortality rate greater than 90% which results in more than 300,000 deaths per year.[8] Those who survive the devastating event, often retain a hypoxic brain injury and a permanently incapacitating neurologic deficit.[9] Studies of patients who survived to ICU admission but subsequently died in the hospital, brain injury was the cause of death in 68% after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and in 23% after in-hospital cardiac arrest.[10,11] Therapeutic hypothermia, or targeted temperature management, is a therapeutic intervention that is intended to limit neurologic injury after a patient’s resuscitation from cardiac arrest.