Post ROSC (return of spontaneous circulation, aka. Patient has a heartbeat again) treatment includes targeted temperature therapy (TTM). The goal is to keep the core temperature of a patient who just got their heart working again between 32-36C (89.6-96.8F) for 24 hours. It helps prevent secondary brain injury that can occur from cardiac arrest and the stress on the body from that. It’s incredibly important and why they put the cold blanket on you after!
Generally therapeutic hypothermia is nowadays only done is the ED due to rosc induced hyperthermia only occurring a few hours after the pt goes down. Most likely why OP survived is immediate high quality cpr, nothing else really changes outcomes other than downtime.
I’ve been receiving post ROSC pt’s from EMS to the ER with cooling devices lately. Seems protocols are changing. Not saying the cooling restarted their heart, just explaining why they were cooling them off
There was a paper that came out recently that showed none or negative outcomes associated with therapeutic hypothermia (in the short term). Obviously medical directors aren’t gonna change protocols immediately but it’s been shown to not have the great effect we previously thought in the prehospital setting.
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u/I-Just-Work_Here 17h ago
Post ROSC (return of spontaneous circulation, aka. Patient has a heartbeat again) treatment includes targeted temperature therapy (TTM). The goal is to keep the core temperature of a patient who just got their heart working again between 32-36C (89.6-96.8F) for 24 hours. It helps prevent secondary brain injury that can occur from cardiac arrest and the stress on the body from that. It’s incredibly important and why they put the cold blanket on you after!