Hypothermia versus Normothermia after Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

🤖 Plain-English Summary

BACKGROUND: Targeted temperature management is recommended for patients after cardiac arrest, but the supporting evidence is of low certainty. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with coma after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, targeted hypothermia did not lead to a lower incidence of death by 6 months than targeted normothermia.

🔑 Key Findings

• METHODS: In an open-label trial with blinded assessment of outcomes, we randomly assigned 1900 adults with coma who had had an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest of presumed cardiac or unknown cause to undergo targeted hypothermia at 33°C, followed by controlled rewarming, or targeted normothermia with early treatment of fever (body temperature, ≥37.8°C).
• The primary outcome was death from any cause at 6 months.
• Secondary outcomes included functional outcome at 6 months as assessed with the modified Rankin scale.

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