Invasive versus noninvasive cooling after in- and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

Abstract

Pittl U, Schratter A, Desch S et al. Invasive versus non-invasive cooling after in- and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a randomized trial. Clin. Res. Cardiol. 102(8), 607-614 (2013). Therapeutic hypothermia is the cornerstone of the postcardiac arrest period management. Several methods may be used as external or internal cooling. Pittl et al. reported a randomized, prospective, single-center study evaluating an invasive (Coolgard(®)) versus a non-invasive (Arctic Sun(®)) cooling method after cardiac arrest in 80 patients in Germany. The neurological outcome and neuron-specific enolase level were not different in the two groups at 72 h after cardiac arrest. The efficacy of the two cooling methods were similar. This study underlines the fact that the type of cooling method is not the most important thing to consider in therapeutic hypothermia, but the need of a progressive and soft rewarming may make the difference in the future between different devices.