Longer In-Hospital Resuscitation Improves Survival
An observational study of patients with cardiac arrest at 435 U.S. hospitals find facilities with the longest attempt had higher survival to discharge.
An observational study published in The Lancet and made available Sept. 5 suggested maintaining CPR longer during in-hospital cardiac arrest events will result in better survival rates among the patients.
The authors, whose work received funding from the American Heart Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, and the National Institutes of Health, reported they identified, 64,339 patients with cardiac arrest between 2000 and 2008 at 435 U.S. hospitals within the Get With The Guidelines—Resuscitation registry, then calculated the median duration of resuscitation before efforts terminated in non-survivors, as a measure of the hospitals' overall tendency for longer attempts. They used multilevel regression models to assess the association between the length of resuscitation attempts and risk-adjusted survival.
About 48 percent of the patients achieved the resumption of spontaneous circulation, and 15.4 percent survived to be discharged from the hospital. Patients at hospitals where the longest attempts were made had a higher likelihood of return of spontaneous circulation and survival to discharge, according to the abstract of their paper.