The February issue of SJ Magazine featured an article about life saving medical advances in emergency cardiac care. Therapeutic hypothermia is a treatment used on cardiac arrest patients. After a patient is resuscitated, they are cooled so that their core body temperature drops in order to prevent brain damage caused by the heart stopping.

Paul Mass, Cooper patient, is featured in the article discussing his heart failure and how he is now back to his family life – thanks to therapeutic hypothermia.

“By inducing mild hypothermia, we make patients just cold enough to decrease inflammation of the brain, but not cold enough to be harmful,” said Stephen Trzeciak, MD, Director of the Cooper Resuscitation Center. “We’ve definitely seen striking cases of improvement.”

To read the complete article visit www.sjmagazine.net.

Stephen W. Trzeciak, MD

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently published an article about hospital paramedics who are using the cooling process of icing cardiac-arrest patients in the ambulance, even before they get to the ER, to prevent neurological damage. Some individuals are questioning the significant difference of doing it a few minutes sooner because there is no clear evidence that starting before arrival at the emergency room helps the patient.

“Does the 15 minutes make a difference? The jury is still out on that,” said Stephen W. Trzeciak, MD, emergency medicine physician at Cooper, who tells other ERs how to pack resuscitated patients in ice for transport to Camden. “But you certainly can kick-start the process.”

To read the complete article visit philly.com.

Critical Care and Emergency Medicine researchers at Cooper University Hospital have published a research study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), one of the leading medical journals. Their research, which was a large multicenter study of adult patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) after resuscitation from cardiac arrest, found that exposure to hyperoxia, or excessively high oxygen levels in the blood, is a common occurrence and an independent predictor of in-hospital mortality.

Conventionally, patients are administered 100% oxygen during cardiac arrest and resuscitation in attempts to get the heart restarted. However, after the heart is successfully restarted, the optimal level of oxygen has been controversial. The research indicates that you can get too much of a good thing, and excessive oxygen may be harmful.

Read the full story

Cooper University Hospital is proud to appoint Carolyn E. Bekes, M.D., as Chief Medical Officer.

“Dr. Bekes has had a very successful career at Cooper and has served in many and varied capacities. Through effective leadership and hard work, I am confident that she will continue to excel within this new position.” said John P. Sheridan, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer.

Read the full story