The gold standard for treating hyperthermia is full immersion in an icewater bath.
I remembered seeing this same wording somewhere in the literature, and today I found it
on MedScape (registration is free if you don't have a login there):
Cold Water Immersion: The Gold Standard for Exertional Heatstroke Treatment
"Recently (in a historical sense, i.e., 50 to 100 yrs or so ago), a widely circulated opinion has encouraged some in the medical community to avoid using cold water immersion (CWI) for the acute treatment of heatstroke.[19,30] This line of thinking has reached the medical community, including athletic trainers, team physicians, emergency department physicians, emergency medical technicians, registered nurses, first aid-trained coaches, and others. The number one criticism of CWI is that patients will actually heat up (or at least not cool down) in CWI because of peripheral vasoconstriction (PVC) and shivering. However, scientific evidence strongly refutes this criticism. Evidence from basic physiological studies looking at the effect of CWI on cooling rates in hyperthermic individuals and treatment of actual EHS victims clearly shows that CWI has cooling rates superior to any other known modality.[2,10,11,21,22]
We have recently stated, "it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to kill an otherwise healthy athlete experiencing EHS if rapid cooling via cold/ice water immersion is implemented within a few minutes after collapse".[9]Wouldn't you want to cool the person down more gradually? This sounds something like forcing a dehydrated person to drink several quarts of ice-cold water in rapid succession. Doesn't seem right.
From the above link:
"Any delay in the process of rapidly cooling an individual experiencing EHS, whether it is caused by a delay in the initiation of treatment or the use of an inferior coding modality, can dramatically increase the likelihood of morbidity and mortality associated with the condition."
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