Evidence-based guidelines recommend therapeutic hypothermia in adults following resuscitation from cardiac arrest.
Very few trials exist for children.
The most recently published study on the subject (New England Journal of Medicine, May 2015) was of 295 children aged 2 days to 18 years old, at 38 different childrens hospitals who underwent targeted temperature management.
There was no significant difference in primary outcome between the hypothermia and normothermia groups. One year survival and 28-day survival were similar, as were incidences of infection, serious arrhythmias, and use of blood products.
"In comotose children who survived out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, therapeutic hypothermia, as compared with therapeutic normothermia , did not confer a significant benefit in survival with a good functional outcome at 1 year."
References
Therapeutic Hypothermia after Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest in Children. Mosler FW, et al. N Eng J Med 2015; 372:1898-1908. May 2015
