Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea
ABSTRACT
The use of hypothermia for a variety of therapeutic purposes has a long history. Hippocrates recommended the use of topical cooling to stop bleeding. When the effects of hypothermia on systemic oxygen use was known at 1950s, the use of systemic hypothermia became a commonly used modality in cardiac surgery. In the early 1990s, it was found that mild hypothermia had benefit for the brain of cardiac arrest patients. Since then, there was a burst of researches in many other brain injury conditions. Most striking progress of therapeutic hypothermia was achieved in the area of cardiac arrest resuscitation in the past decades. In addition, many clinical trials on a variety of brain diseases are undergoing these days. Even though there are many things to overcome the current barrier against the use of hypothermia in clinical situation, the development of new modalities will improve the outcome and reduce the side effects of hypothermia in the near future.