ORIGINAL RESEARCH Open Access Cardiac arrest survivors tre r a in

Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleNearly 275,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) occur in Europe each year [1]. Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is an abrupt loss of heart function leading to cessation of normal circulation of the blood. The final outcome is mostly determined by the onset of hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy defined as irreversible, struc-tural alterations in the central nervous system resulting from transient global hypoperfusion of the brain tissue pitalized after OHCA and almost 25 % of deaths in pa-tients after in-hospital cardiac arrest following successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) [4,5]. Mild thera-peutic hypothermia (MTH) is the only currently recom-mended neuroprotective measure known to influence outcomes in cardiac arrest survivors. The results of a 2012 Cochrane meta-analysis show that mild therapeutic hypothermia is effective in improving neurological out-comes at the end of hospital treatment (number needed to treat [NNT] = 6) and increasing survival during hos-pital stays (NNT = 7) in patients following OHCA [6]