2 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
In the U.S. alone, over 300,000 people per year have sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), and less than 1 out of 10 survive. The current standard practice for treating OHCA is to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) at the scene until either the heart is restarted or resuscitation efforts are considered hopeless and discontinued. An alternative strategy for those with refractory OHCA is expedited transport with ongoing mechanical CPR to an Emergency Department capable of performing extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR). The purpose of study is to test if this strategy is feasible and beneficial.
This is a Phase II, single center (Under the Center for Resuscitation Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School), partially blinded, prospective, intention to treat, safety and efficacy clinical trial, randomizing adult patients (18-75 years old) with refractory ventricular fibrillation/pulseless ventricular tachycardia (VF/VT) out-of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) who are transferred by emergency medical services (EMS) with ongoing mechanical cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or who are resuscitated to receive one of the 2 local standards of care practiced in our community: 1) Early Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) Facilitated Resuscitation or 2) Standard Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) Resuscitation