Outcomes in Cardiac Arrest Patients due to Toxic Exposure Treated with Therapeutic Hypothermia

Survival following intentional succinylcholine injection for self-harm

Succinylcholine is a short-acting depolarizing neuromuscular blocking agent. We describe a case where the above drug was employed for self-harm by a health-care worker. The patient, a 28-year-old female, was brought to the emergency department (ED) in impending respiratory arrest and altered mental status. On arrival, she had hypoxia, bradycardia, and hypotension. Although the cause for rapid deterioration in this patient was unknown, the ED physician still went ahead by resuscitating the patient's airway, breathing, and circulation. During the course of resuscitation, information was received that an empty ampoule of succinylcholine was recovered from her bathroom. Further clinical examination and laboratory investigations led the treating physicians to suspect deliberate intravenous injection of succinylcholine. She was mechanically ventilated and monitored in the critical care unit. Targeted temperature management was initiated in the ED and was continued for 24 h. The patient was discharged from the hospital without any neurological deficits after 4 days. Patients with acute poisoning are one of the major encounters in ED, and this case highlights the possibility of anesthetic drug misuse in any health-care workers coming to the ED with sudden cardiac arrest, altered sensorium, or abnormal vitals. This is the first report describing the survival of a patient following intentional succinylcholine injection for self-harm.

Impact of Targeted Temperature Management on ED Patients with Drug Overdose-Related Cardiac Arrest

INTRODUCTION

Drug overdose is the leading cause of non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) among young adults. This study investigates whether targeted temperature management (TTM) improves hospital survival from presumed overdose-related cardiac arrest.

METHODS

Retrospective chart review of consecutive cardiac arrests presenting to an urban tertiary care hospital ED from 2011 to 2015. ED patients with cardiac arrest were included if < 50 years old, and excluded if there was a non-overdose etiology (e.g., trauma, ST-elevation myocardial infarction, subarachnoid hemorrhage). The main intervention was TTM, carried out with a combination of the Arctic Sun device and refrigerated crystalloid/antipyretics (goal temperature 33-36 °C). The primary outcome was survival to hospital discharge; neurologically intact survival was the secondary outcome.

RESULTS

Of 923 patients with cardiac arrest, 802 (86.9%) met exclusion criteria, leaving 121 patients for final analysis. There were 29 patients in the TTM group (24.0%) vs 92 patients in the non-TTM group (76.0%). Eleven patients (9.1%) survived to hospital discharge. TTM was associated with increased odds of survival to hospital discharge (OR 11.3, 95% CI 2.8-46.3, p < 0.001), which increased substantially when palliative outcomes were excluded from the cohort (OR 117.3, 95% CI 17.0-808.4, p < 0.001). Despite achieving statistical significance (OR 1.1, 95% CI 1.0-1.3), TTM had no clinically significant effect on neurologically intact survival.

CONCLUSIONS

TTM was associated with improved survival in ED patients with presumed drug overdose-related cardiac arrest. The impact of TTM on neurologically intact survival among these patients requires further study.