Adrenaline in cardiac arrest

The use of adrenaline during a cardiac arrest is well-established and supported by international guidelines. However, recent studies1–2 have questioned the appropriateness of adrenaline administration whereas other papers indicate that any benefit from adrenaline maybe time-sensitive.3–4 Two recently published studies have both challenged the use of adrenaline during resuscitation and whilst both papers used different methodologies they demonstrated similar results. The Paramedic 2 study1 was a placebo-based randomised control trial whereas the paper by Loomba et al.,2 used a meta-analysis of 14 peer-reviewed publications recruiting 655,853 patients, 7.4% of whom received adrenaline. Neither study was able to demonstrate any meaningful survival benefit associated with adrenaline administration (Table 1 and ​and2).2). However, both studies noted poor neurological outcome in post-cardiac survivors. It is noteworthy that both of these studies used different, but validated,5 neurological scoring systems (either the Modified Rankin Scale or the Cerebral Performance Category). Table 1 Survival data Paramedic 2 study