Focus on cardiac arrest

Excerpt

Cardiac arrest (CA) survival rates vary substantially, which may reflect differences in quality of the local chain of survival for both out-of-hospital and in-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA and IHCA). A recent large, prospective, population-based registry conducted over 2 years in Paris, France, found a 7.5 % survival rate at discharge after OHCA [1] (Fig. 1), whereas a 10.8 % 30-day survival rate was reported from the Danish National Registry [2]. A recent analysis of the American Heart Association Get with the Guidelines-Resuscitation registry, including 358 hospitals between 2000 and 2009, documented a 18.8 % (IQR 14.5–22.6 %) median survival rate to hospital discharge following IHCA [3]. A similar survival rate (18.4 %) was reported by the UK National Cardiac Arrest Audit database [4]. Survival rates are widely variable in IHCA patients, depending on the location and circumstances, even for patients in intensive care units as illustrated by recent reports [5, 6]. The use of a prediction model in the emergency department could facilitate the identification of patients with a higher mortality risk [7] to guide preventive interventions.

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