Predicting Survival After CPR: Can we GO-FAR?

JAMA Internal Medicine (JIM, you'll always be Archives of Internal Medicine to me) has published a study of an outcome prediction tool for in-hospital cardiac arrest. Specifically, a tool to predict the rates of neurologically intact survival after an in-hospital arrest. The developers of the tool call it GO-FAR (Good Outcome Following Attempted Resuscitation). One could imagine ways of re-titling it FORe-GO, if one chose to spend one's time imagine such things. This is the best tool of its kind that I've seen, although one needs to be very clear about what it's actually predicting. The paper mostly describes, in detail, the derivation and validation of the tool. I won't belabor this - they did a good job of it, used a large dataset, created a model, tested and validated it to get the best receiver operator curve, etc. The data come from the massive, US-based, 'Get With the Guidelines Registry' (which used to be called the National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation). The GWGR collects standardized data on in-hospital cardiac arrests from 366 hospitals in the US (all types and regions of hospitals) (the national rate of CPR survival to discharge of 18% which most of us are aware of comes from the GWGR). The GO-FAR data come from arrests between 2007-2009 (51,000 patients). Worth belaboring, because this is critically important in understanding if one chooses to use this as a tool to help patients understand CPR outcomes, is how they defined a good outcome: a C...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Carer Workers Authors: Source Type: blogs