Prospects for Mild Therapeutic Hypothermia and Improved CPR in Cardiopulmonary Cerebral Resuscitation

Each year in the United States there are ~450,00 deaths from myocardial infarction (MI) [1] (with 310,000of these deaths occurring before the patient reaches the hospital) as a result of a non-perfusing arrhythmia, principally ventricular fibrillation.[2] This mode of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is also responsible for the majority of the 190,000 in-hospital deaths from MI, which typically occur within the first 24 hours following admission.[3] Especially tragic is that 50% of these deaths occur in persons ~60 years of age or less.[4] An estimated additional 20,000 incidents of SCA occur as a result of asphyxiation, drowning, electrocution, and genetic or developmental predisposition to lethal arrhythmias (Wolf-Parkinson‟s White Syndrome, congenital thickening of the interventricular septum, and idiopathic arrhythmic disease) and other non-atherosclerosis causes. This latter category of SCA typically occurs in individuals whose mean age is less than 35.[5],[6]