Cardiac arrest victim Trudy Jones ‘given placebo’– rather than experimental epinephrine

As part of a study to find out if epinephrine (adrenaline in Commonwealth countries) is safe to use in cardiac arrest, a patient was treated with a placebo, rather than the inadequately tested drug. Some people are upset that the patient did not receive the drug they know nothing about.^[1]

The critics are trying to make sure that we never learn.

We need to find out how much harm epinephrine causes, rather than make assumptions based on prejudices.

When used in cardiac arrest, does epinephrine produce a pulse more often?

Yes.

When used in cardiac arrest, does epinephrine produce a good outcome more often?

We don’t know.

In over half a century of use in cardiac arrest, we have not bothered to find out.
 

We did try to find out one time, but the media and politicians stopped it.^[2]

We would rather harm patients with unreasonable hope, than find out how much harm we are causing to patients.

We would rather continue to be part of a huge, uncontrolled, unapproved, undeclared, undocumented, unethical experiment, than find out what works.

Have we given informed consent to that kind of experimentation?

Ignorance is bliss.

The good news is that the enrollment of patients has finished, so the media and politicians will not be able to prevent us from learning the little that we will be able to learn from this research.^[3]

Will the results tell us which patients are harmed by epinephrine?

Probably not – that will require a willingness to admit the limits of what we learn and more research.

What EMS treatments have been demonstrated to improve outcomes from cardiac arrest?

1. High quality chest compressions.
2. Defibrillation, when indicated.

Nothing else.

All other treatments, when tested, have failed to be better than nothing (placebo).

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Footnotes:

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^[1] Cardiac arrest victim Trudy Jones ‘given placebo’
BBC News
23 March 2018
Article

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^[2] Effect of adrenaline on survival in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: A randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial
Jacobs IG, Finn JC, Jelinek GA, Oxer HF, Thompson PL.
Resuscitation. 2011 Sep;82(9):1138-43. Epub 2011 Jul 2.
PMID: 21745533 [PubMed – in process]

Free Full Text PDF Download from reanimacion.net
 

This study was designed as a multicentre trial involving five ambulance services in Australia and New Zealand and was accordingly powered to detect clinically important treatment effects. Despite having obtained approvals for the study from Institutional Ethics Committees, Crown Law and Guardianship Boards, the concerns of being involved in a trial in which the unproven “standard of care” was being withheld prevented four of the five ambulance services from participating.

In addition adverse press reports questioning the ethics of conducting this trial, which subsequently led to the involvement of politicians, further heightened these concerns. Despite the clearly demonstrated existence of clinical equipoise for adrenaline in cardiac arrest it remained impossible to change the decision not to participate.

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^[3] Paramedic2 – The Adrenaline Trial
Warwick Medical School
Trial Updates
 

Trial Update – 19 February 2018:
PARAMEDIC2 has finished recruitment and we are therefore no longer issuing ‘No Study’ bracelets. The data collected from the trial is in the process of being analysed and we expect to publish the results in 2018. Once the results have been published, a summary will be provided on the trial website.

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