Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation

Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation (EPR) is an experimental medical procedure developed to rapidly preserve the organism during ischemia, using hypothermia, drugs, and fluids, to “buy time” for transport and resuscitative surgery. Trials are being done to test the feasibility of rapidly inducing profound hypothermia (< 10oC) with an aortic flush in trauma victims that have suffered CA and failed standard resuscitative efforts to enable resuscitative surgery and delayed resuscitation with cardiopulmonary bypass. The primary outcome variable will be survival to hospital discharge with minimal neurologic dysfunction.