Therapeutic hypothermia in cocaine-induced cardiac arrest.

Therapeutic hypothermia is an exciting new treatment modality that has been shown to have significantly improved outcomes in comatose survivors of cardiac arrest. One of the exclusion criteria of the landmark studies on therapeutic hypothermia was a potential toxin-induced cause of the persistent comatose state and presumably of the cardiac arrest itself. We present the first reported case of a comatose survivor of cocaine-induced cardiac arrest successfully treated with therapeutic hypothermia.