Bakken Lecture: the brain, the heart, and therapeutic hypothermia

Therapeutic hypothermia in acute resuscitation medicine has a long history, but its currently recommended use dates back to work in the mid-1960s by the late Dr. Peter Safar and colleagues. Compared with normothermia, mild therapeutic hypothermia, induced right after restoration of spontaneous circulation in comatose survivors of cardiac arrest, leads to 1 additional patient with intact neurological outcome for every 6 patients treated. Demonstrating benefit from therapeutic hypothermia in other acute neurological insults, such as traumatic brain injury, has been more difficult. Current research to optimize the benefits of mild therapeutic hypothermia in cardiac arrest is focused on hypothermia's profound effects on drug metabolism, determining the best anesthetics and sedatives to use with cooling, and identifying compounds that may promote induction of hypothermia or create a poikilothermic state. Future applications of therapeutic hypothermia may include induction of emergency preservation and resuscitation to buy time for damage-control surgery in patients with exsanguination cardiac arrest.