Bystander Resuscitation Reduces Brain Damage and Death from Cardiac Arrest

A study by Kragholm et al published in the NEJM reports that bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or defibrillation in patients with cardiac arrest offers benefits that persist for a year out from the event.

The authors looked at data of 2855 patients in Denmark who were 30-day survivors of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest during the period from 2001 through 2012.  Of those patients a total of 10.5% had brain damage or were admitted to a nursing home and 9.7% died during the 1-year follow-up period. During the study period, among the 2084 patients with cardiac arrests who were not resuscitated by emergency medical services personnel (EMS) the rate of bystander CPR increased from 66.7% to 80.6%, and the rate of defibrillation increased from 2.1% to 16.8%.  Interestingly, the rate of brain damage or nursing home admission decreased from 10.0% to 7.6%, and all-cause mortality decreased from 18.0% to 7.9%. The risks of these outcomes were even lower among patients who received bystander defibrillation as compared to no bystander resuscitation.

The authors concluded that patients on whom bystander CPR and defibrillation was performed had significantly lower risks of brain damage or nursing home admission and even death when compared to those who were not resuscitated.