European journal of emergency medicine : official journal of the European Society for Emergency Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Effect of sodium bicarbonate on functional outcome in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a post-hoc analysis of a French and North-American dataset.
No large randomised controlled trial has assessed the potential benefits on neurologic outcomes of prehospital sodium bicarbonate administration in patients with nontraumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). ⋯ In patients with OHCA, prehospital sodium bicarbonate administration was not associated with neurologic outcomes in a French dataset and was associated with worse neurologic outcomes in a North-American dataset. Given the considerable variability in sodium bicarbonate use by different prehospital care systems and the potential resuscitation-time bias in the present study, a large randomised clinical trial targeting specific patient subgroups may be needed to determine whether sodium bicarbonate has a role in the prehospital management of prolonged OHCA.