What is New in Pharmacologic Therapy for Cardiac Resuscitation?

Abstract

Antiarrhythmic therapy can be a critical component of cardiac resuscitation. Therapies in this area have seen little advance in the last decade. Bretylium, a very old drug, has been reintroduced for ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation (VT/VF) therapy. There are still important questions to be addressed with bretylium: when to administer (first- or second-line) and at which dose. These questions and the development of newer agents will be areas of future research.