Cooling of Heart Attack Patients to Improve Recovery

A noninvasive cooling system that controls, monitors, and maintains the core body temperature of heart attack patients to induce mild hypothermia is designed to reduce damage to the heart. The system has been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for controlling body temperature in the range of 33-37o C.

Animal studies have shown that mild hypothermia may reduce the area of dead tissue and damage to the heart following a heart attack if instituted early enough and prior to reopening the diseased vessel during catheterization. The cooling is also thought to reduce the brain's need for oxygen while suppressing the chemical processes that can permanently damage brain cells in patients with sudden cardiac arrest.

The new system, called Arctic Sun, consists of a control module and energy transfer pads. The patient's current temperature and a preset target temperature provide feedback that adjusts the temperature of circulating water from the control module through the pads, based on a thermo-regulatory algorithm. Arctic Sun was developed by Medivance, Inc. (Louisville, CO, USA), which has completed a safety and feasibility study that was presented at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics Conference in Washington (DC, USA).

"Based on the pilot data we have reviewed, we believe that we can initiate early cooling in the emergency room, maintain patient comfort with proper medication, and achieve a below-normal therapeutic temperature target before reopening the occluded blood vessel,” said Raoul Bonan, M.D., an interventional cardiologist from the Montreal Heart Institute (Canada) who conducted the study.




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