A randomised, double-blind, multi-centre trial comparing vasopressin and adrenaline in patients with cardiac arrest presenting to or in the Emergency Department

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vasopressin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

To compare vasopressin and adrenaline in the treatment of patients with cardiac arrest presenting to or in the Emergency Department (ED).

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, young adults, adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

A randomised, double-blind, multi-centre, parallel-design clinical trial in four adult hospitals.

Patients with traumatic cardiac arrest or contraindication for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) were excluded.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, open-label and parallel-group study.

Because people in this Vasopressin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

As a double-blind Vasopressin study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

Being open-label, the Vasopressin study did not mask who received what.

Groups ran in parallel: each of the participants stayed in one arm throughout.

Primary outcome was survival to hospital discharge (defined as participant discharged alive or survival to 30 days post-arrest).

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Emergency Service, Hospital, Epinephrine, Heart Arrest, Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest, Survival Analysis and Vasoconstrictor Agents.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and open-label study of Vasopressin.

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 2012 (Resuscitation), a journal based in Ireland.

More context: the Vasopressin compound page, all human trials.