Treatment improved survival in non-shockable heart cases, researchers say
TUESDAY, Nov. 17, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Patients who receive therapeutic hypothermia may be nearly three times more likely to survive cardiac arrest, according to a study published online Nov. 16 in Circulation.
David Gaieski, M.D., an associate professor of emergency medicine at the School of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and colleagues looked at data for 519 patients with in- and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest between 2000 and 2013. All had non-shockable rhythms.
Lowering the body’s temperature increased survival rates nearly three-fold (odds ratio, 2.8). Those treated with the cold therapy were also 3.5 times more likely to have better neurologic outcome than those who didn’t receive the therapy, the researchers said.
“Our findings provide support for the idea that all unconscious post-arrest patients should receive aggressive care with therapeutic hypothermia,” Gaieski told HealthDay. “Withholding [this treatment] does not make sense given these data and other data from other studies at many institutions around the world.”
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