Early goal-directed management after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: lessons from a certified cardiac arrest centre.

Background: Despite continuous advances in post-resuscitation management, the outcome after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is limited. To improve the outcome, interdisciplinary cardiac arrest centres (CACs) have been established in recent years, but survival remains low, and treatment strategies vary considerably in clinical and geographical aspects. Here we analysed a strategy of in-hospital post-resuscitation management while evaluating the outcome.

Methods: A broad spectrum of pre- and in-hospital parameters of 545 resuscitated patients admitted to the Cardiac Arrest Center of the University Hospital of Marburg between January 2018 and December 2022 were retrospectively analysed. Inclusion criteria were ≥18 years, resuscitation by emergency medical services, and non-traumatic cause of OHCA.

Results: In the overall patient cohort, the survival rate to hospital discharge was 39.8% (n = 217/545), which is 50.7% higher than in the EuReCa-TWO registry. A total of 77.2% of the survivors had CPC status 1 or 2 (favourable neurological outcome) before and after therapy. A standardized 'therapy bundle' for in-hospital post-resuscitation management was applied to 445 patients who survived the initial treatment in the emergency department. In addition to basic care (standardized antimicrobial therapy, adequate anticoagulation, targeted sedation, early enteral, and parenteral nutrition), it includes early whole-body CT (n = 391; 87.9%), invasive coronary diagnostics (n = 322; 72.4%), targeted temperature management (n = 293; 65.8%), and if indicated, mechanical circulatory support (n = 145; 32.6%), and appropriate neurological diagnostics.

Conclusions: Early goal-directed post-resuscitation management in a well-established and highly frequented CAC leads to significantly higher survival rates. However, our results underline the need for a broader standardization in post-resuscitation management to ultimately improve the outcome.