Let's talk about the data.
Tell me about it.
Heh, nice callout with Willy (an attending I like makes the same pose when pimping us).
The two major NEJM randomized trials of OHCA patients with VF you've probably read:
-Bernard SA, Gray TW, Buist MD, et al. Treatment of comatose survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest with induced hypothermia. N Engl J Med 2002;346:557- 563.
---->59% of cooled pts survived compared to 45% of controls
-Hypothermia after Cardiac Arrest Study Group. Mild therapeutic hypothermia to improve the neurologic outcome after cardiac arrest. N Engl J Med 2002;346: 549 – 556.
---->49% of cooled pts survived compared to 26% of controls
Rather than quote a bunch of small studies, here's a lit review of 13 of them:
-Sagalyn E, Band RA, Gaieski DF, Abella BS. Therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest in clinical practice: review and compilation of recent experiences. Crit Care Med. 2009 Jul; 37(7 Suppl):S223-6.
----> Cooled patients had increased survival/favorable outcome with an OR of 2.5
Two recent systematic review/meta-analysis finding cooling to be associated with improved outcomes in post-arrest patients:
Arrich J, Holzer M, Havel C, Müllner M, Herkner H. Hypothermia for neuroprotection in adults after cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012 Sep 12;9:CD004128.
Kim YM, Yim HW, Jeong SH, Klem ML, Callaway CW. Does therapeutic hypothermia benefit adult cardiac arrest patients presenting with non-shockable initial rhythms?: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized and non-randomized studies. Resuscitation. 2012 Feb;83(2):188-96. doi: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2011.07.031.
Now I ain't no googly-eyed fanboy. The 2nd meta-analysis I listed notes (quite fairly) the limitations/low quality of several studies on hypothermia in post-arrest patients. It's tough to blind providers in a hypothermia trial. The level of standardization of reporting things like cooling rates, adverse events, outcomes/endpoints could be higher. The exact mechanism of how cooling works isn't known and it's also been argued that the big benefit of cooling could simply be the avoidance of fever. These are things that should (and will likely) be addressed.
All things considered, limitations in mind, I think the data is solid enough to earn most out-of-hospital VF players a shot at the only neuro-protective tool we have to offer that's been shown to be of benefit for these folks. That being said, areas of cooling are murky and I'm open to being convinced otherwise. Let me know the holes in my thinking.