Abstract
Early myoclonus in comatose survivors of cardiac arrest, even when it is not myoclonic
status epilepticus (MSE), is considered a sign of severe global brain ischemia and
has been associated with high rates of mortality and poor neurologic outcomes. We
report on three survivors of primary circulatory cardiac arrests who had good neurologic
outcomes (two patients with a CPC score = 1 and one patient with a CPC score = 2) after mild therapeutic hypothermia, despite exhibiting massive myoclonus within
the first 4 h after return of spontaneous circulation. The concept that early myoclonus heralds
a uniformly poor prognosis may need to be reconsidered in the era of post-cardiac
arrest mild therapeutic hypothermia.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 03, 2011
Accepted:
September 12,
2011
Received in revised form:
August 22,
2011
Received:
February 23,
2011
Footnotes
☆A Spanish translated version of the abstract of this article appears as Appendix in the final online version at doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2011.09.017.
Identification
Copyright
© 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
