Cardiac arrest strikes over 350,000 people each year in the United States. Often an abrupt disease without warning signs, cardiac arrest requires immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation and often defibrillation in an attempt to save lives. When resuscitation is successful, additional challenges face emergency care personnel and hospital-based critical care providers: the struggles to reverse the broad organ injuries and neurologic insults that are triggered by arrest and resuscitation. The strategy to improving outcomes from cardiac arrest include approaches such as targeted temperature management (TTM), careful brain monitoring, employment of coronary angiography for select patients, and avoidance of early withdrawal of care. In this lecture, Dr. Abella will review the pathophysiology that underpins post-arrest injury, and will discuss the “bundle of care” required to save lives and improve long term function after cardiac arrest. Stories of patient survival will be included to illustrate how impactful such efforts can be.
