NIH: In a multicenter, international study of infants and children who
suffered cardiac arrest while in the hospital, NIH-funded researchers
have found that body cooling, or therapeutic hypothermia, is no more
effective than actively keeping the body at a normal temperature, or
therapeutic normothermia.
The study is the first to look exclusively at in-hospital cardiac
arrests in infants and children in order to compare the two temperature
treatments. Earlier trials involving adults who went into cardiac arrest
outside of a hospital had found that therapeutic hypothermia improved
survival and brain function. However, recent trials in adults and
children did not find such improvements when compared with patients
whose temperature was actively maintained in a normal temperature range
to prevent fever.