Loading...
Therapeutic cooling for cardiac arrest usually is started in the hospital. Two recent studies examined prehospital cooling.
In one study, researchers in Australia randomized 234 patients with cardiac arrest who had initial rhythm of ventricular fibrillation and return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) to receive infusion of ice-cold lactated Ringer's solution initiated either in the field (up to 2L, followed by infusion of 10–20 mL/kg after hospital arrival) or in the hospital (40 mL/kg). Surface cooling was administered to both groups in the hospital, and a target temperature of 33°C was maintained for 24 hours. Mean temperature on hospital arrival in the prehospital-cooling group was 0.8°C lower than in the control group (34.4°C vs. 35.2°C…