Rh Rhodium

[Ann Emerg Med. 2010;■■:■■■.] In November 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) prematurely terminated a large, multicenter study by the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium. It was designed to assess 2 therapies intended to improve blood flow during out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. One arm assessed whether a 3-minute interval of conventional cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) before the first defibrillation attempt improves survival. The other arm examined the efficacy of an impedance threshold device, a valve designed to increase negative chest pressure during the relaxation phase of CPR. When data from the first 11,500 subjects showed that neither intervention increased survival, the NIH ended the trial.