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full screen The cooling can start already in the patient’s home and continue in the ambulance. Archive image. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT
Early cooling is to be tested as a new treatment method for patients who have suffered cardiac arrest, Karolinska University Hospital writes in a press release.
– If you survive at the site of the cardiac arrest and the heart starts, we know that less than 50 percent survive with full neurological function, says senior physician Per Nordberg, who leads an international study, to P4 Stockholm.
The new method will hopefully provide better protection for the patients’ brain and heart, increase survival and give a better chance for full recovery. The treatment can already start in the patient’s home, continue in the ambulance with the help of a mobile cooling method and later continue in the hospital.
The patients participating in the study are the most critically ill with heart disease.
Around 20 European study centers are participating in the study, including in Spain, Italy, Germany and Belgium.