Mild Therapeutic Hypothermia for Cardiac Arrest Patients

Few people who experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survive to discharge. Pharmacologic interventions have proven futile. Hypothermia, which reduces brain metabolism and production of harmful metabolites, has been shown to be beneficial in animal studies and in small, preliminary human studies. Two recent randomized, controlled, multicenter studies evaluated the effects of mild hypothermia in patients who were resuscitated after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

The studies, one from Australia (77 patients) and one from Europe (275 patients), differed in design. Compared with the Australian study, the European study had more and stricter exclusion criteria (only 8% of patients assessed for eligibility were enrolled). In the Australian stu…