Hypothermia versus normothermia in patients with cardiac arrest and shockable rhythm: a secondary analysis of the TTM-2 study – Critical Care
Background The aim of this study was to assess whether hypothermia increased survival and improved functional outcome when compared with normothermia in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients with similar characteristics than in previous randomized studies showing benefits for hypothermia. Methods Post hoc analysis of a pragmatic, multicenter, randomized clinical trial (TTM-2, NCT02908308). In this analysis, the subset of patients included in the trial who had similar characteristics to patients included in one previous randomized trial and randomized to hypothermia at 33 °C or normothermia (i.e. target < 37.8 °C) were considered. The primary outcome was survival at 6 months; secondary outcomes included favorable functional outcome at 6 months, defined as a modified Rankin scale of 0–3. Time-to-death and the occurrence of adverse events were also reported. Results From a total of 1891 included in the TTM-2 study, 600 (31.7%) were included in the analysis, 294 in the hypothermia