|
|
|
Press Releases
| Kent Hospital Implements Hypothermia Treatment |
|
02/26/10
|
First Hopsital In The State To Provide Defined Protocol For Care
Kent Hospital announced today it has implemented hypothermia treatment for patients who suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. The cutting-edge treatment cools a patient’s body temperature and greatly reduces damage to both the heart and brain.
“This treatment option offered at Kent provides an additional method of care that provides hope to cardiac arrest patients to whom science and medicine previously had little to offer,” said Michael Dacey, M.D., senior vice president and chief medical officer. “We have developed a protocol that identifies an immediate and qualifying need followed by very specific treatment guidelines. The results have been extremely positive in the cases treated to date,” he said.
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in which the heart actually stops beating, usually secondary to a heart attack, affects approximately 400,000 people each year in the United States. The chances of surviving such an arrest nationally and in Rhode Island are about 7 percent with most survivors suffering severe brain damage as a result of the arrest. However, studies have shown that cooling the body after resuscitation can result in consistent improvement in brain recovery, while data also reflects an improved chance of survival with the treatment.
Kent Hospital is the first hospital in the state to provide a comprehensive, evidence-based hypothermia protocol that incorporates staff from emergency medicine, critical care, cardiology and neurology to provide a team approach to improve outcomes in these critically ill patients. The protocol starts in the emergency department and continues in the intensive care unit as subspecialty physicians evaluate and treat the patient. In addition, the hospital is tracking results through its Institutional Review Board to be assessed with other national research data examining this treatment.
Hypothermia treatment works in the following way: After the heart stops, blood flow to the vital organs, particularly the brain, ceases completely. Although CPR does restore some flow, it is still only a small fraction of normal flow and very quickly the brain and vital organs are irreversibly damaged. Thus, even if the heart is re-started, the patient may be left with severe brain injury and may never regain consciousness. Lowering body temperature reduces the demand that the brain has for oxygen and protects brain cells.
“We’ve all heard of people who fall through the ice during winter time and are clinically dead for as long as an hour but yet eventually recover completely when resuscitated. That was the genesis that started researchers on track to develop this treatment for other patients who suffer arrests,” said Dr. Patricia Russo-Magno, the director of Kent’s intensive care unit and the doctor who led the effort at Kent.
“This protocol is recommended by the American Heart Association and is done at other hospitals in New England but requires a multi-disciplinary approach to do it well given the complexities involved,” said Dr. Russo-Magno.
“The results initially have been promising both at Kent and nationally with consistent finding for improvement in brain recovery along with published studies showing that some patients see the odds of survival improve by as much as five times,” said Dr. Dacey. |
|
Back
|
|
|
|
