ABSTRACT
Cardiac arrest (CA) accounts for more than 400,000 of the 650,000 deaths caused by cardiac disease in the United States each year. Discharge rates for individuals resuscitated after in-hospital CA are only approximately 20%,1 and less than 10% of patients survive following out-of-hospital CA.2 Following interruption of blood ow to the brain, neurologic sequelae are frequent complications following initially successful resuscitation from CA. In one study, for example, severe brain injury was the cause of death in 37% of CA survivors and only 14% of patients were neurologically normal or near-normal at 12 months.3 Permanent, signicant brain damage resulting from ischemia/ reperfusion contributes substantially to the mortality and neurologic morbidity of more than 250,000 patients “successfully” resuscitated from CA each year in the United States alone.
