When Cooling a Patient After Cardiac Arrest, Does Use of a Neuromuscular Blocking Agent Make Your Job Easier?

• Status: Unknown status
• Trial end date: 2015-02-01
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

After successful resuscitation from cardiac arrest, cooling the whole body is a well established treatment that improves the chances of the brain recovering. This however, has to be done within a certain time-frame from the arrest. The purpose of this study is to explore the best way of dosing the muscle relaxing medications that are given during the cooling process.

Hypothesis: In the context of our institutional therapeutic hypothermia protocol, cisatracurium infusions lead to faster drops in core temperature when compared to cisatracurium prn boluses alone.

• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: No

Details

• Lead Sponsor: Lawson Health Research Institute
• Collaborator: University of Western Ontario, Canada
• Treatments: Atracurium; Cisatracurium; Neuromuscular Blocking Agents

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• Admission to adult ICU (age ≥18 years) at London Health Sciences Centre

• Primary reason for ICU admission: postcardiac arrest

• Both in-hospital and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest will be included

• ICU admission between Jan 2008 and Dec 2012.

Exclusion Criteria:

• ICU admissions primarily for reasons other than cardiac arrest.