ORLANDO, Fla., Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Rapidly cooling a person in cardiac arrest may improve the chance of survival without brain damage, researchers in Sweden said.
Dr. Maaret Castren of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and colleagues at 14 centers across Europe randomly gave 180 patients either standard resuscitation or resuscitation including use of a battery-powered tool called RhinoChill that introduced coolant through nasal prongs.
The study found 46.7 percent of those cooled survived to hospital discharge versus 31 percent of those receiving standard care with 36.7 percent of those cooled being in good neurological condition on hospital discharge versus 21.4 percent of those receiving standard care.
"Our results show that the earlier you can do the cooling, the better," Castren said in a statement. "When resuscitation efforts were delayed, there was no significant difference in survival."
However, in the 137 patients in whom resuscitation efforts began within 10 minutes, 59.1 percent of those cooled survived to hospital discharge versus 29.4 percent of those receiving standard care with 45.5 percent of those cooled being neurologically intact at hospital discharge versus 17.6 percent of those receiving standard care.
The findings were presented at the annual scientific meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Fla.
