“Therapeutic hypothermia” for post-cardiac arrest is officially over
New AHA guidelines end the targeted temperature management era
Targeted temperature management post-cardiac arrest is optional, says AHA
New guidelines from the American Heart Association have effectively ended the two decade era of cooling comatose patients post-cardiac arrest. The new advisement: prevent fevers by keeping core temperature ≤37.5° C; cooling below that is optional. Read on for details. PulmCCM is not affiliated with AHA or ILCOR.
Background
Therapeutic hypothermia, later rebranded as targeted temperature management, became a standard post-cardiac arrest therapy for comatose patients after two 2002 NEJM trials (n=273 and n=77) suggested reducing core temperature to 32°C to 34°C markedly improved neurologic outcomes and survival. Although those studies only included out of hospital cardiac arrests due to ventricular fibrillation, induced hypothermia was rapidly and widely adopted and applied to most cardiac arrest patients, regardless of initial rhythm or location of arrest. This was in large part due to the recommendations from a tas…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to PulmCCM to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.