Cardiac Arrest Combo

A combination of several drugs during cardiopulmonary resuscitation improves neurologically intact survival, according to a recently published study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers at 3 tertiary care centers in Greece conducted a randomized controlled trial that combined epinephrine, vasopressin and corticosteroid supplementation, along with stress dose hydrocortisone if post-resuscitative shock was present. This achieved an almost 20% improvement over the current American Heart Association guideline of either epinephrine or vasopressin alone. The authors theorize that the steroids improve cerebral microcirculatory flow.