Response to Letter Regarding Article, “The Utility of Therapeutic Hypothermia for Post–Cardiac Arrest Syndrome Patients With an Initial Nonshockable Rhythm”

Abstract

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to Dr Chan’s insightful comments regarding our article, “The Utility of Therapeutic Hypothermia for Post–Cardiac Arrest Syndrome Patients With an Initial Nonshockable Rhythm.”1 In this article, we used propensity score matching in a quasi-experimental design to mimic a randomized, controlled trial. Propensity score analyses have been both promoted and criticized in the literature, with a known limitation being the impact of unmeasured variables; however, there have been no published randomized trials of targeted temperature management versus no temperature management for patients with initial nonshockable rhythms because of various barriers. Our analysis, which included 519 patients with an initial nonshockable rhythm from the Penn Alliance for Therapeutic Hypothermia (PATH) Registry between 2000 and 2013, was …