Cardiac Arrest

  • There are 17 million deaths annually from cardiovascular disease, or 30% of all global mortality.  Of these deaths, about 40% are sudden cardiac deaths attributed ventricular tachyarrhytmhias1
  • Patients successfully resuscitated after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest often have a serious medical condition called post-resuscitation disease.  This condition includes significant neurologic injury from global ischemia2
  • In 2002, two prospective randomized trails were published that showed moderate hypothermia substantially improved outcome for these patients3,4
  • In 2003, the International Liaison  Committee on Resuscitation recommended therapeutic hypothermia for these patients5
  • Selective brain cooling with the Neuro-Wrap™ avoids the complications seen with full body cooling and brain cooling can be achieved rapidly and safely
    • Preliminary studies show that brain temperature can be lowered 1.4° C per hour while maintaining normal body temperature
    • Complications of systemic hypothermia do not occur as systemic normothermia is maintained

Links
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3000873
http://www.scahq.org/sca3/newsletters/2003dec/drug3.shtml
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-10-body-cooling-cover_x.htm
http://general-medicine.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/2002/226/1

1Mehra R. Global public health problem of sudden cardiac death. J Electrocardio. 2007 Nov-Dec; 40(6 Suppl):S118-22.
2Sanders AB. Therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest. Curr Opin Crit Care, 2006 Jun; 12(3):213-7.
3Bernard SA, Gray TW, Buist MD, et al. Treatment of comatose survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest with induced hypothermia. N Engl J Med 2002; 346:557-563.
4The Hypothermia after Cardiac Arrest Study Group. Mild therapeutic hypothermia to improve the neurologic outcome after cardiac arrest. Engl J Med 2002; 346:549-556.
5Nolan JP, Morley TL, Vanden Hoek RW, et al. Therapeutic Hypothermia after Cardiac Arrest: An Advisory Statement by the Advanced Life Support Task Force of the International Liaison Committee for Resuscitation. Circulation 2003; 108:118-121.

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