The Systematic Approach for Identification of Cause Among Out-of-hospital Cardiac Arrest Survivors

Plain-language summary

The cause of cardiac arrest mostly determines outcomes of cardiac arrest survivors. Identifying and treating the cause of cardiac arrest constitute a critical part in post-arrest care. However, the pathophysiology of cardiac arrest often encompasses multiple organ systems. Thus, forming accurate diagnosis for each case presents a daunting challenge, especially for unexperienced physicians. This study aims to evaluate whether a standardized protocol would improve the diagnostic proficiency for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients. Sixteen Emergency Medicine Residents from National Taiwan University Hospital participated in this study. The cause classification of OHCA (CCCA) protocol was developed by an expert cardiac arrest committee, and a lecture concerning the Utstein's template, the epidemiology of cardiac arrest and the CCCA protocol was addressed. Pre-/post-lecture questionnaires regarding self-assessed diagnostic certainty and knowledge of cardiac arrest were obtained and compared to evaluate participants' learning effectiveness. To validate the efficiency of protocol, medical records of 586 non-traumatic OHCA adults with successful resuscitation and ICU admission were reviewed retrospectively, and the OHCA cause of each patient was identified by the trained residents following CCCA protocol. The primary outcome was the diagnostic consistency between protocolized diagnosis, expert diagnosis and the discharge diagnosis

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