• Christian Storm, Joerg C Schefold, Thoralf Kerner, Willi Schmidbauer, Jola Gloza, Anne Krueger, Achim Jörres, and Dietrich Hasper.
• Department of Nephrology and Medical, Intensive Care Medicine, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Virchow-Klinikum, Berlin, Germany.
• Clin Res Cardiol. 2008 Oct 1;97(10):768-72.

BackgroundAnimal studies suggest that the induction of therapeutic hypothermia in patients after cardiac arrest should be initiated as soon as possible after ROSC to achieve optimal neuroprotective benefit. A "gold standard" for the method of inducing hypothermia quickly and safely has not yet been established. In order to evaluate the feasibility of a hypothermia cap we conducted a study for the prehospital setting.Methods And ResultsThe hypothermia cap was applied to 20 patients after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest with a median of 10 min after ROSC (25/75 IQR 8-15 min). The median time interval between initiation of cooling and hospital admission was 28 min (19-40 min). The median tympanic temperature before application of the hypothermia cap was 35.5 degrees C (34.8-36.3). Until hospital admission we observed a drop of tympanic temperature to a median of 34.4 degrees C (33.6-35.4). This difference was statistically significant (P < 0.001). We could not observe any side effects related to the hypothermia cap. 25 patients who had not received prehospital cooling procedures served as a control group. Temperature at hospital admission was 35.9 degrees C (35.3-36.4). This was statistically significant different compared to patients treated with the hypothermia cap (P < 0.001).ConclusionsIn summary we demonstrated that the prehospital use of hypothermia caps is a safe and effective procedure to start therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest. This approach is rapidly available, inexpensive, non-invasive, easy to learn and applicable in almost any situation.

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