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Drugs during cardiopulmonary resuscitation
Current Opinion in Critical Care, 05/02/2011
Morley PT – The use of some drugs can be recommended in cardiac arrest, but only on the basis of short–term benefits. These short–term benefits need to be converted into long–term outcomes by optimizing management in the postarrest period. Potential drug strategies need to be evaluated in settings in which the drug is administered in a timely fashion, good cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is provided, and postresuscitation care has been optimized.
Methods- Definitive studies have now been performed in human cardiac arrests, randomly comparing drugs with neutral controls.
- These publications have confirmed the short-term benefits of the standard drugs used in advanced life support (including epinephrine) when compared with no drugs.
- There are still many gaps in the authors’ knowledge, but a number of new approaches offer promise, including the use of intravenous lipid emulsions (in cardiac arrests due to local anesthetic toxicity), erythropoietin and even stem cells.
