Abstract
I
The expert panel discussions resulted from the annual Chilling at the Beach Symposium that was held in Miami, Florida, in March 2017. The first concentrated on unique areas of cooling strategies that targeted various clinical situations including sepsis, reducing fever, and the use of transnasal cooling in patients with migraine. The second involved targeted temperature management and nursing care. Leading experts in delivery of therapeutic hypothermia discussed various protocols for utilizing hypothermia for liver transplants, temperature management care of cardiac arrest, and strategies initiating temperature management in a busy hospital setting. Both of these presentations generated considerable discussions by the attendees at the conference.
Enhancing these expert panel discussions published in this issue is an invited review on targeted temperature management utilizing hypothalamic and extrahypothalamic modulation approaches, and an editorial comment on targeted temperature management with or without the “cold stress” response.
Accompanying these special features, several original articles are a part of this important issue.
• Dr. Makker and colleagues discuss the clinical effect of rebound hyperthermia after cooling in postcardiac arrest patients.
• A meta-analysis of preclinical trials of therapeutic hypothermia for intracerebral hemorrhage is described by Dr. Melmed et al.
• A common strategy for producing hypothermia is the utilization of surface cooling devices that are directly compared in an article by Aujla and colleagues, targeting clinical care patients.
• Mohammad et al. report on the proteomics in hypothermia as adjunctive therapy in patients with myocardial infarction that is associated with the CHILL-MI study.
• Shi et al. present an experimental rodent study of ischemia/reperfusion injury, emphasizing the beneficial effects of therapeutic hypothermia on the inflammatory response after injury.
• Finally, Kim and colleagues, for the first time, report on the effects of hypothermia on mechanisms underlying the transport of FAS (First Apoptosis Signal) and the development of apoptosis after transient and focal ischemia in animals.
The Arctic Challenge in this issue once again raises several important questions regarding the use of targeted temperature management strategies in various patient populations. Questions addressed in this informative column include issues regarding postoperative craniotomy patients and ideal strategies to intraoperatively prevent heat loss. Another question concerning the use of norepinephrine or phenylephrine for blood pressure support during hypothermia that is an important clinical problem is addressed.
The effects of magnesium on the minimization of shivering in hypothermia patients are currently being discussed in the clinical literature. Another timely question relates to selective cooling of the head and brain in adult cardiac arrest patients when the protocol is implemented to a target temperature of 33°C. These questions and rich discussions with appropriate references should be extremely helpful to the readership of the Journal.
Together, this issue provides our readership with new information regarding the use of hypothermia as well as cellular and molecular mechanisms of protection.
Lastly, I am happy to report that the impact factor for Therapeutic Hypothermia and Temperature Management has increased due to the high-caliber articles our authors submit and publish with us, for which we are very grateful. We encourage our scientific community to submit their original and review articles for peer review. If you have any questions regarding the submission of your work, please contact me directly. And as always, we thank our reviewers and editorial board members for their expert critiques and commentaries on submitted articles.
We hope you enjoy reading this issue and welcome your ideas and feedback.