A randomised trial to investigate the efficacy of magnesium sulphate for refractory ventricular fibrillation.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Anti-Arrhythmia Agents in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Ventricular fibrillation (VF) remains the most salvageable rhythm in patients suffering a cardiopulmonary arrest (CA).

However, outcome remains poor if there is no response to initial defibrillation.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, AND INTERVENTION: Patients in CA with refractory or recurrent VF treated in the prehospital phase by the county emergency medical services and/or in the A&E department.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Anti-Arrhythmia Agents and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Anti-Arrhythmia Agents.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Anti-Arrhythmia Agents could be set against what happens without it.

A randomised, double blind, placebo controlled trial.

Pre-defined primary and secondary endpoints were ROSC at the scene or in accident and emergency (A&E) and discharge from hospital alive respectively.

What Was Measured

However, outcome remains poor if there is no response to initial defibrillation.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Anti-Arrhythmia Agents, Heart Arrest, Logistic Models, Magnesium Sulfate, Recurrence and Ventricular Fibrillation.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Anti-Arrhythmia Agents.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2002 (Emergency medicine journal : EMJ), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.