Benefit of immediate coronary angiography after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in France: A nationwide propensity score analysis from the RéAC Registry.

BACKGROUND: The survival rate of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) remains extremely low, generally under 10%. Post-resuscitation care, and particularly early coronary reperfusion, may improve this outcome. The main objective of the present study was to determine whether patients with immediate coronary angiography at hospital admission (CAA) had a better outcome than patients without immediate CAA. METHODS: This cohort analysis study was based on data extracted from the French National Cardiac Arrest registry (RéAC). To control for attribution bias, patients were matched using a propensity score, which included age clusters, low flow and no flow delays, initial rhythm and bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The main endpoint was survival at day 30 (D30). Secondary endpoint was neurological recovery of survivors assessed by the Cerebral Performance Category (CPC) scale, with CPC 1 and 2 at D30 considered as a favorable outcome. RESULTS: From July 1st, 2011 to October 1st, 2016, 63394 OHCA were registered in the database, of which 39444 were of an unknown or suspected cardiac origin. After on-site resuscitation by a mobile medical team, 7584 patients were transported to a hospital facility. Among these patients, 4046 were retained in the analysis after matching for the aforementioned factors and constituted into 2 groups: immediate coronary angiography (iCAA) group (n = 2023) and non-immediate coronary angiography (niCAA) group (n = 2023). The survival rate at D30 after matching was 43.3% in the iCAA group versus 34.5% in the niCAA group (OD = 0.66 [0.58; 0.75], p < 0.001). In the iCAA group, (n = 707) 36% of the patients at D30 were CPC 1-2 comparatively to (n = 539) 27.3% in the niCAA group (p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Both the survival and proportion of patients with favorable neurological recovery were significantly higher in patients who underwent an immediate coronary angiography after a resuscitated OHCA. These observational results warrant further exploration of the benefit of this invasive strategy in randomized studies.

Improving Patient Selection for Refractory Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest Treated with Extracorporeal Life Support.

BACKGROUND: Despite recent management improvement, including Extracorporeal Life Support (ECLS), refractory out of hospital cardiac arrest (ROHCA) survival remains dramatically low. METHODS: We assessed an innovative strategy (Out of hoSpital Cardiac ARrest-ExtraCorporeal Life Support-"OSCAR-ECLS") to optimize access to ECLS of ROHCA patients and reduce the delay between recognition and ECLS implantation. METHODS: This study, conducted in a tertiary teaching hospital, compared the survival and delay times of ROHCA patients treated by ECLS before and after OSCAR-ECLS implementation. This procedure included an early recognition of ROHCA 10 min after initiation of advanced cardiopulmonary resuscitation; the optimization of patient selection and reduction in time from collapse to ECLS initiation. RESULTS: Fourteen patients before and 32 patients after OSCAR-ECLS implementation were identified between 2013 and 2016. Time to ECLS initiation was 99 (90-107) min before OSCAR-ECLS vs. 80 (65-94) min during the OSCAR-ECLS period (P = 0.0007), mostly due to a reduction in time spent on site: 48 (40.0-54.0) min vs. 24 (20.0-28.0) min (P = 0.0001). Survival at hospital discharge was 7% (1/14) before OSCAR-ECLS and 25% (8/32) during the OSCAR-ECLS period (P = 0.20). Only one patient survived with a Glasgow Pittsburgh Cerebral Performance Category (CPC) score = 1 before the OSCAR-ECLS procedure while during the OSCAR-ECLS procedure, eight patients (25%) survived, six with a CPC score = 1, one with a CPC score = 2, and one with a CPC score = 3. CONCLUSIONS: The use of a new paradigm of ROHCA dramatically shortened the time to ECLS initiation by reducing the time spent on site by more than 20 min. Survival improved from 7% to 25% after implementation of OSCAR-ECLS.