Survival From In-hospital Cardiac Arrest on the Internal Medicine Clinical Teaching Unit (original) (raw)

Background: There is a paucity of data on patient outcomes following in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) on the Internal Medicine clinical teaching unit (CTU). Accurate outcome data enhances discussions between patients, surrogates, and physicians, and assists in their management. Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study of consecutive "Code Blue" calls on 2 medical CTUs in a Canadian tertiary centre from . The medical records of identified patients were screened for eligibility and patient-specific and arrestspecific data were collected for eligible events. Primary outcome was survival to hospital discharge. Results: Our cohort comprised 83 patients; including 54 (65.1%) men with a mean age of 75 years (range, 38-97). Infection (34.9%) was the principal reason for admission and over half of patients had 3 or more comorbid illnesses. Forty-three (51.8%) of the IHCA events were witnessed. In all, 39 (90.7%) of the witnessed and 36 (90%) of the unwitnessed arrests were pulseless electrical activity (PEA) or asystole (P ϭ not significant). Return of spontaneous circulation occurred in 29 patients (34.9%) and 2 (2.4%) survived to hospital discharge. No patients survived to discharge after unwitnessed arrest. Conclusions: IHCA in Internal Medicine CTU patients is characterized by a high rate of PEA/asystole and a minimal chance of survival to RÉSUMÉ