Just off the press: Cochrane Collaboration Review of the use of therapeutic hypothermia after cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

“Evidence of moderate quality suggests that conventional cooling methods provided to induce mild therapeutic hypothermia improve neurological outcome after cardiac arrest, specifically with better outcomes than occur with no temperature management”

The updated Cochrane review goes a long way in confirming that hypothermia post-arrest is effective in improving neurological outcomes, even if the included material is of moderate quality. However, it seems to look primarily at outcomes in patients cooled to 34 degrees or lower versus those where no active temperature control is initiated. Thus the reviewers skirt the issue of the effectiveness of more moderate hypothermia through targeted temperature management, such as that used in the TTM trial of 2013. This latter study was treated separately in this review.