Figure 1

Difference in hypothermia versus normothermia: study comparisons. Shown is the percentage favorable outcome, or survival to discharge, compared among the two recent studies of hypothermia as treatment following cardiac arrest [1,2], a small series from 1959 (27 patients, 12 treated with hypothermia) [9], and three nonhypothermic series [20,21,22]. The right-most three bars are zero within the hypothermia group because they represent studies that were not designed to test hypothermia as an intervention [20,21,22]. Visual comparison reveals the closeness of new data from the two trials [1,2] with respect to the other studies [9,20,21,22]. ^*, ^†, ^‡These studies were not hypothermic trials; rather, they are included here to give a perspective on relative discharge statistics following cardiac arrest from other series.