Comorbidity and favorable neurologic outcome after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in patients of 70 years and older

Improved Survival With Favorable Neurological Outcome in Elderly Individuals With Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest in Japan – A Nationwide Observational Cohort Study –

“…16, 19 The study population was different from those in previous studies. In the present study, elderly was defined at a higher age and the frequency of shockable first documented rhythm was lower than that of previous studies.…”

Analysis of the Performance for Bystanders’ Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in Geriatric and Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrested Patients

“…This could have something to do with the fact that the proportion of first-grade first responders who could treat patients with professional CPR increased from 2.2% in 2006 to 4.7% in 2014, which led to more cases where AEDs were applied 24) . In addition, there could be many variables at play such as whether bystanders had witnessed cardiac arrest before, whether they had necessarily discovered a cardiac arrest patient, the underlying disease of a patient and bystanders' quality of performance of chest compressions [11][12][13][14][15] . AHA guidelines suggest swift activation of the emergency response system when there is no breath or reaction from a patient after bystander's discovery and assessment of the patient's consciousness 15) .…”

“…Based on these low survival rates, several studies suggested that performing CPR on elderly cardiac arrest patients should cease [6][7][8] . However, other studies found that there was no difference in survival rate after CPR between elderly and nonelderly cardiac arrest patients [9][10][11][12][13][14] . In order to raise the survival rate of cardiac arrest patients, it is necessary to ensure that each goal in the chain of survival is successfully met, including swiftly identifying a cardiac arrest, activating the emergency response system, performing early CPR that emphasizes chest compressions, and applying rapid defibrillation [15][16][17][18] .…”

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the older population in Ireland

“…Given the known poor outcome associated with asystole, overall poorer OHCAs outcomes are anticipated. The Dutch study recorded a much greater proportion of patients to have a shockable initial rhythm (36%) compared with 19.3% of OHCAs in our study, hence better outcomes are not surprising 1. Identifying ways to overcome these challenges should improve outcomes from OHCA in Ireland and are the subject of an active NAS quality improvement initiative entitled the OneLife Project 15…”