Are Amiodarone and Lidocaine Effective for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest?

Advanced cardiac life support protocols recommend antiarrhythmic medications, such as amiodarone and lidocaine, as mainstays of treatment for patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), especially those with shock-refractory ventricular fibrillation (VF). However, the effect of either medication on survival to hospital discharge or favorable neurologic function has not previously been studied.

Investigators from the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium performed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled multicenter trial to evaluate whether prehospital administration of amiodarone or lidocaine improves either of these outcomes in adult patients with nontraumatic OHCA and shock-refractory VF or pulseless electrical activity (PEA). …