Hypothermia improves outcome from cardiac arrest.
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is common and patients who are initially resuscitated by ambulance officers and transported to hospital are usually admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). In the past, the treatment in the ICU consisted of supportive care only, and most patients remained unconscious due to the severe anoxic neurological injury. It was this neurological injury rather than cardiac complications that caused the high rate of morbidity and mortality. However, in the early 1990's, a series of animal experiments demonstrated convincingly that mild hypothermia induced after return of spontaneous circulation and maintained for several hours dramatically reduced the severity of the anoxic neurological injury. In the mid-1990's, preliminary human studies suggested that mild hypothermia could be induced and maintained in post-cardiac arrest patients without an increase in the rate of cardiac or other complications. In the late 1990's, two prospective, randomised, controlled trials were conducted and the results confirmed the animal data that mild hypothermia induced after resuscitation and maintained for 12 - 24 hours dramatically improved neurological and overall outcomes. On the basis of these studies, mild hypothermia was endorsed in 2003 by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation as a recommended treatment for comatose patients with an initial cardiac rhythm of ventricular fibrillation. However, the application of this therapy into routine clinical critical care practice has been slow. The reasons for this are uncertain, but may relate to the relative complexity of the treatment, unfamiliarity with the pathophysiology of hypothermia, lack of clear protocols and/or uncertainty of benefit in particular patients. Therefore, recent research in this area has focused on the development of feasible, inexpensive techniques for the early, rapid induction of mild hypothermia after cardiac arrest. Currently, the most promising strategy is a rapid infusion of large-volume (40 mL/kg) ice cold intravenous fluid. Also, newer automated surface cooling/warming devices have been developed which allow tight control of body temperature in the ICU. On the other hand, a number of questions remain. The benefit of hypothermia in non-ventricular fibrillation cardiac arrest remains uncertain. Also, the best timing of induction and the duration of hypothermia after cardiac arrest are uncertain. Clinical trials are currently underway to assess these issues.
Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria.
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Bernard