Prehospital therapeutic hypothermia in cardiac arrest: will there ever be evidence?

Prehospital therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest - from current concepts to a future standard

Therapeutic hypothermia has been shown to improve survival and neurological outcome after prehospital cardiac arrest. Existing experimental and clinical evidence supports the notion that delayed cooling results in lesser benefit compared to early induction of mild hypothermia soon after return of spontaneous circulation. Therefore a practical approach would be to initiate cooling already in the...

Therapeutic hypothermia in the emergency department following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a leading cause of mortality and severe neurological disability. Recent literature suggests that mild therapeutic hypothermia (MTH) can improve survival and neurological outcome in some groups of comatose patients after cardiac arrest but uncertainty exists over the best way to implement this treatment. This review examines the evidence for the efficacy ...

Prehospital cooling in cardiac arrest - the next frontier?

Therapeutic hypothermia (TH) in unconscious survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is now a well-documented part of post-resuscitation care. Implementation of TH into daily clinical practice has been far more successful in the Scandinavian countries than in the rest of the world. Still, many questions remain. One of them is whether prehospital cooling will result in better outcomes.

Prehospital resuscitated cardiac arrest patients: role for induced hypothermia.

This article is a support paper for the National Association of EMS Physicians' position paper on induced therapeutic hypothermia in resuscitated cardiac arrest patients. Induced hypothermia is one of the newest treatments aimed at increasing the dismal neurologically intact survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients. Two landmark studies published in 2002 by the New England Jour...

Prehospital Therapeutic Hypothermia for Cardiac Arrest