Good neurologic recovery after cardiac arrest using hypothermia through continuous renal replacement therapy.

Therapeutic hypothermia (TH) is becoming a standard of care to mitigate neurologic injury in cardiac arrest survivors. Several cooling methods are available for use in TH. For maintaining a target temperature, intravascular cooling is superior to, more efficacious than, and safer than surface cooling methods. The use of an intravenous cooling catheter is independently associated with a higher odds ratio for survival. However, many techniques use commercially developed equipment that is expensive to purchase and use. The application and popularization of the intravascular cooling method have been difficult. In patients with pulmonary edema or cardiac insufficiency, liquid is restricted, so intravascular cooling systems cannot be used. Studies have shown abnormalities mimicking the immunologic and coagulation disorders observed in severe sepsis. Continuous renal replacement therapy has been widely used in the intensive care unit to improve clinical parameters and survival in patients with multiple-organ dysfunction of septic origin. Continuous renal replacement therapy can also be used as another type of core cooling method. We used continuous renal replacement therapy as a cooling method to induce TH in a patient who had a cardiac arrest, and the patient regained consciousness 52 hours later.