Resuscitation
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Approximately 1000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) occur each day in the United States. Although sex differences exist for other cardiovascular conditions such as stroke and acute myocardial infarction, they are less well understood for OHCA. Specifically, the extent to which neurological and survival outcomes after OHCA differ between men and women remains poorly characterized in the U.S. ⋯ Compared to women, men with OHCA have more favorable cardiac arrest characteristics but were less likely to survive to hospital admission, survive to discharge, nor have favorable neurological survival.
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Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) often provide post-resuscitation care. Our aims were to investigate whether physicians' frequent exposure to prehospital post-resuscitation care is associated with differences in (1) medical management, (2) achieving treatment targets recommended by resuscitation guidelines, (3) survival. ⋯ Physicians with more, frequent exposure take a more active approach to post-resuscitation care, but this does not seem to improve survival.
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To investigate whether somatosensory evoked potential (SSEP) amplitude adds information for prediction of poor outcome in postanoxic coma. ⋯ Our results confirm that very low cortical SSEP amplitudes are highly predictive of poor outcome in patients with postanoxic coma. Adding 'N20-P25 threshold amplitude' to the 'bilaterally absent N20' criterion, increased sensitivity substantially.