Cardiac Arrest Survival Statistics

We’re getting better with our management of out of hospital cardiac arrest via quality bystander CPR. The majority of this credit should go to the organizations such as the AHA who puts together programs taught by firefighters, paramedics and EMT’s (forgive me if I screw up the semantics) to health care personnel and the lay public which empower those attendees to save lives with their training.

No matter how you look at it, the numbers are still pretty bad, but they’re getting better. 8.8% of cardiac arrest patients lived to be discharged from the hospital. Some nuisances behind those numbers include no quality of life being discussed, nor a breakdown of the etiology behind the arrests by subgroups. Nonetheless, the authors did a great job of compiling data from many different studies to give us an idea of what we can expect when our patients roll into our emergency departments and ICUs. 

Only 22% survive long enough to be admitted to the hospital.
In the last decade we’ve improved the survival to hospital discharge and 1 year survival. We should all pat ourselves on the back to some extent bc were the ones who do and will take care of these patients. I know that we sometimes prolong death, but we’ve all had some big wins that have given us purpose and made our hearts full with satisfaction for what we’re trained to do. A hat tip to the authors.

-EJ

Yan, S., Gan, Y., Jiang, N. et al. The global survival rate among adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients who received cardiopulmonary resuscitation: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Crit Care 24, 61 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-020-2773-2

Link to FULL FREE Article

Link to Abstract

Yan, S., Gan, Y., Jiang, N. et al. The global survival rate among adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients who received cardiopulmonary resuscitation: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Crit Care 24, 61 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-020-2773-2

Although great care has been taken to ensure that the information in this post is accurate, eddyjoemd, LLC shall not be held responsible or in any way liable for the continued accuracy of the information, or for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies, or for any consequences arising therefrom.

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: ACLS in the CVICU

Yesterday, @yournursingeducator created a great post on Code Blue tips. @fobiesme asked a very legitimate question regarding how to proceed in patients who are s/p bypass or any open chest situation in the CVICU. This was something I wondered about myself even as someone who taught ACLS for the AHA at a point in my life. It was hard to find a solid answer. Fortunately, as of 2017, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons put forth this consensus statement and algorithm on how to handle cardiac arrest situations in the CVICU population. Since this is relatively new data (only 2 years ago), I understand that the CVICU nurses out there may not be familiar with nor using this particular algorithm. What we did in my shop is that we printed this out with all its pretty colors, laminated it, and placed it on the code carts. Fortunately, this is entirely FREE!

-EJ

Link to full FREE PDF

Dunning J, Levine A, Ley J; STS Task Force. The Society of Thoracic Surgeons expert consensus for the resuscitation of patients who arrest after cardiac surgery. Ann Thorac Surg 2017;103:1005–20.

Although great care has been taken to ensure that the information in this post is accurate, eddyjoemd, LLC shall not be held responsible or in any way liable for the continued accuracy of the information, or for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies, or for any consequences arising therefrom.