Survival after cardiac arrest predictable

Researchers can predict prognosis for survival after cardiac arrest

Researchers from Austria have found that the still measurable heart rate in a specific form of cardiac arrest can predict the prognosis for survival. The new findings give emergency physicians the opportunity to better assess the situation and the chances of patients.

Help is often too late

In Germany alone, around 75,000 people are reanimated every year after a cardiac arrest, yet only about 5,000 of them survive. In some cases, this is because the help comes too late. Cardiac arrest counts every minute. Heart pressure massage can restore oxygen to the heart and other organs such as the brain. Researchers from Austria have now found that the still measurable heart rate in a particular form of cardiac arrest can predict the prognosis for survival.

Researchers from Austria have found that the still measurable heart rate in a specific form of cardiac arrest can predict the prognosis for survival. (Image: Sonja Calovini / fotolia.com)

Predict prognosis for survival

Pulseless electrical activity (PEA) is a form of cardiac arrest in which, despite an organized cardiac rhythm, there is no cardiac output in the ECG.

For the first time, researchers from the University Hospital for Emergency Medicine at the Medical University of Vienna (MedUni) have been able to retrospectively show in a large group of more than 500 patient data that the heart rate measurable on the ECG in PEA can predict the prognosis for survival.

"If the heart rate was over 60 beats per minute, the later survival was 22 percent and thus very close to the survival prognosis in those with ventricular fibrillation (Note: 30 percent)," explain the study authors Christoph Weiser and Alexander Spiel from the Department of Emergency Medicine the MedUni Vienna in a communication.

"Only when a heart rate of less than 25 beats was measured, the prognosis was very bad (Note: at only 2%)."

The results of the study were recently published in the journal "Resuscitation".

Stimuli are no longer translated into mechanical heart actions

While PEA has electrical cardiac activity, these stimuli are no longer translated into mechanical heart actions.

So it can not be treated with a defibrillator, as in ventricular fibrillation, for example, which still has a "shockable" heart rhythm, with the help of which one tries, so to speak, to restore the electrical activity to an orderly rhythm.

Pulseless electrical activity is treated by cardiopulmonary resuscitation such as chest compressions and adrenaline. Previously, it was believed that the overall survival prognosis for a PEA is rather poor.

Better assess chances of the person concerned

With the current study, the scientists at the MedUni Vienna were able to show that the electrical heart rate measured in the first monitor ECG is a powerful tool for further prognosis and that the higher the measurable heart rate, the higher the chance of survival.

"This gives the emergency physicians the opportunity to be able to assess the situation and the chances of those affected even better and at an early stage," the study authors say.

In 2020, the international guidelines for resuscitation will be adapted internationally again. The wise and the game suggest that their new insights could be included. (Ad)