Despite advances in cardiac arrest resuscitation survival from cardiac arrest is less than 20-30% and new therapies are urgently needed. Sodium nitrite infused during resuscitation from cardiac arrest has recently been shown to improve survival in a mouse model of cardiac arrest and our group is eager to test this hypothesis in a clinical trial. Our overall hypothesis is that an infusion of 2 μmole/kg sodium nitrite during resuscitation will increase the proportion of patients who will survive cardiac arrest. In preparation for a clinical trial, preliminary safety and efficacy data (phase 1) is needed which is the primary goal of this study.