24 Jan Survival From In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Improves But Still Worse on Nights and Weekends

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr. Ofoma

Uchenna Ofoma, MD, MS
Associate, Critical Care Medicine
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Temple University
Director of Critical Care Fellowship Research
Geisinger Medical Center

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? 

Response: Patients who suffer in-hospital cardiac arrest at nights and during weekends (off-hours) are known to have lower rates of survival to hospital discharge, compared to their counterparts who have cardiac arrest during the daytime on weekdays (on-hours). Since overall survival to hospital discharge has improved over the past decade for the approximately 200,000 patients who experience in-hospital cardiac arrest annually, our study sought to determine whether survival differences between off-hours and on-hours arrest has changed over time.

On-hours was categorized as 7:00 a.m. to 10:59 p.m. Monday to Friday. Off-hours was categorized as 11:00 p.m. to 6:59 a.m. Monday to Friday or anytime on weekends. Among 151,071 adult patients in the GWTG-Resuscitation registry who experienced in-hospital cardiac arrest between January 2000 and December 2014, slightly over half (52%) suffered a cardiac arrest during off-hours. We found that survival to hospital discharge improved significantly in both groups over the study period — for on-hours: from 16.0% in 2000 to 25.2% in 2014; for off-hours: 11.9% in 2000 to 21.9% in 2014.

However, despite overall improvement in both groups, survival from in-hospital cardiac arrest at nights during off-hours remained significantly lower compared to on-hours by an absolute 3.8%.

MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report? 

Response: Survival to hospital discharge has improved in both groups of patients. This is reassuring and suggests that health care providers and hospital systems must be doing something right. However, the persistent survival disparities between on-hours and off-hours arrests remains concerning. To ensure that improved survival trends are sustained over time, narrowing this gap must be made an area of focus for quality improvement efforts. Data regarding mediator variables, such as physician and nurse staffing patterns and how they changed over the course of the study was not available for this study. 

MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this work? 

Response: Since timing of in-hospital cardiac arrest appears to impact survival outcomes, future research should aim at identifying factors that may be associated with these described survival discrepancies and care processes that mitigate against them.

Disclosures: The authors received research support from the Geisinger Health System Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. 

Citations:

Journal of the American College of Cardiology
Volume 71, Issue 4, January 2018
DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2017.11.043
Trends in Survival After In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest During Nights and Weekends
Uchenna R. Ofoma, Suresh Basnet, Andrea Berger, H. Lester Kirchner, Saket Girotra, for the American Heart Association Get With the Guidelines – Resuscitation Investigators, Benjamin Abella, Monique L. Anderson, Steven M. Bradley, Paul S. Chan, Dana P. Edelson, Matthew M. Churpek, Romergryko Geocadin, Zachary D. Goldberger, Patricia K. Howard, Michael C. Kurz, Vincent N. Mosesso Jr., Boulos Nassar, Joseph P. Ornato, Mary Ann Peberdy and Sarah M. Perman

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Last Updated on January 24, 2018 by Marie Benz MD FAAD