RhinoChill Intra-Nasal Cooling System Effectively Chills Brain After Cardiac Arrest

It has been known for a while now that cooling the body after cardiac arrest improves neurological outcome, and therapeutic hypothermia has become a standard measure in many hospitals. However, in a study in this month’s Circulation, a new nasopharyngeal device was used to initiate cooling during cardiac arrest. The RhinoChill Intra-Nasal Cooling System from BeneChill (San Diego, CA) uses a non-invasive nasal catheter that sprays a rapidly evaporating coolant liquid into the nasal cavity, adjacent to the major vascular structures of the brain. The system is compact, battery operated and easy and fast to insert, making it more practical in emergency situations than surface or intravascular cooling devices.
In the study witnessed cardiac arrest patients were randomized to either intra-arrest cooling with the RhinoChill device while CPR was being conducted (n=96) or standard care (n=104), with both groups being cooled after hospital arrival. The target temperature of 34°C was reached much faster in the RhinoChill group. Although the study was not powered to detect outcome differences, in subgroup analysis nasal cooling and early CPR within 10 minutes after arrest, when combined, resulted in a 27% absolute increase in survival over CPR alone and a 26% increase in neurologically intact survival. These are pretty impressive results for such a simple device and we are sure you will hear more about this one when larger trials are able to confirm these results.
Article abstract in Circulation: Intra-Arrest Transnasal Evaporative Cooling. A Randomized, Prehospital, Multicenter Study (PRINCE: Pre-ROSC IntraNasal Cooling Effectiveness)…
Product page: RhinoChill Intra-Nasal Cooling System…