Evidence-based crisis standards of care for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in a pandemic

Pandemics such as COVID-19 can lead to severe shortages in healthcare resources, requiring the development of evidence-based Crisis Standard of Care (CSC) protocols. A protocol that limits the resuscitation of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) to events that are more likely to result in a positive outcome can lower hospital burdens and reduce emergency medical services resources and infection risk, although it would come at the cost of lives lost that could otherwise be saved. Our primary objective was to evaluate candidate OHCA CSC protocols involving known predictors of survival and identify the protocol that results in the smallest resource burden, as measured by the number of hospitalizations required per favorable OHCA outcome achieved.

Source: Resuscitation - August 2, 2020 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Peter Natalzia, William Murk, Jeffrey J. Thompson, Maia Dorsett, Jeremy T. Cushman, Philip Reed, Brian M. Clemency, the CARES Surveillance Group Tags: Clinical paper Source Type: research