Epidemiology and outcomes from non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Korea: A nationwide observational study

ObjectivesWe aimed to describe the epidemiological features and to determine the predictors for survival to discharge of non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in Korea.Subjects and methodsA nationwide Utstein style OHCA database (2006–2007) was constructed from ambulance records and hospital medical record review. Cases were enrolled when they were non-traumatic OHCA with presumed cardiac aetiology. Using the population census (2005), we calculated age–gender standardized incidence rates (SIR) and mortality (SMR). We modelled a multivariate logistic regression analysis to determine the effect of risk factors on hospital outcomes.ResultsThe total number of EMS-assessed non-traumatic OHCA patients was 19 045. The SIR was 20.9 (2006) and 22.2 (2007) per 100 000 and survival-to-discharge rate was 2.3% for EMS-assessed non-traumatic OHCA, and was 3.5% for the resuscitation-attempted group. From a multivariate logistic regression analysis, witnessed arrest, and shorter basic life support (BLS) and EMS intervals turned out to be significant predictors of good outcome in the resuscitation-attempted group.ConclusionFrom a nationwide OHCA cohort, the incidence of EMS-assessed non-traumatic OHCA was found to be low. Survival-to-discharge rate in the resuscitation-attempted group was 3.5%, which was significantly associated with witnessed arrest, and shorter BLS and EMS intervals.