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Most of the available clinical tests for prognosis of postanoxic coma are informative of poor outcome. Previous work has shown that an improvement in auditory discrimination over the first days of coma is predictive of awakening. Here, we aimed at evaluating this test on a large cohort of patients undergoing therapeutic hypothermia and at investigating its added value on existing clinical measures.

We recorded electroencephalographic responses to auditory stimuli in 94 comatose patients, under hypothermia and after rewarming to normal temperature. Auditory discrimination was semiautomatically quantified by decoding electroencephalographic responses to frequently repeated versus rare sounds. Outcome prediction was based on the change of decoding performance from hypothermia to normothermia.

An increase in auditory discrimination from hypothermia to normothermia was …