Survival Rates After Pediatric Traumatic Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Suggest an Underappreciated Therapeutic Opportunity

Objectives Children with traumatic arrests represent almost one third of annual pediatric out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCAs). However, traumatic arrests are often excluded from study populations because survival posttraumatic arrest is thought to be negligible. We hypothesized that children treated and transported by emergency medical services (EMS) personnel after traumatic OHCA would have lower survival compared with children treated after medical OHCA. Methods We performed a secondary, observational study of children younger than 18 years treated and transported by 78 EMS agencies in southwestern Pennsylvania after OHCA from 2010 to 2014. Etiology was determined as trauma or medical by EMS services. We analyzed patient, cardiac arrest, and resuscitation characteristics and ascertained vital status using the National Death Index. We used multivariable logistic regression to test the association of etiology with mortality after covariate adjustment. Results Forty eight of 209 children (23%) had traumatic OHCA. Children with trauma were older than those with medical OHCA (13.2 [3.8–15.9] vs 0.5 [0.2–2.4] years, P
Source: Pediatric Emergency Care - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research