Abstract
Efficacy and safety of an intravascular cooling system were examined in survivors of cardiac arrest. Eighteen comatose patients who had been successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest were included. Therapeutic hypothermia was performed with intravascular cooling system in the 6 cases (IC group) and with conventional surface cooling method in 12 cases (conventional group). The time to reach the target temperature and the average thermal burden (difference between actual and target temperature, ATB) were compared. Time to reach the target temperature in the IC group was tend to be shorter than in the conventional group (249±91 vs. 407±157 min). The ATB in the IC group were significantly smaller than that in the conventional group in both maintenance phase (0.03±0.02 vs. 0.32±0.16: P<0.01) and rewarming phase (0.12±0.04 vs. 0.34±0.16: P<0.05). No specific complications associated with the new cooling system were observed. The new intravascular cooling technique seems to be more effective than the conventional technique.
