Clinical paperCPR quality during out-of-hospital cardiac arrest transport

BackgroundPrevious studies have demonstrated significant associations between cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) quality metrics and survival to hospital discharge. No adequately powered study has explored the relationship between location of resuscitation (scene vs. transport) and CPR quality.MethodsWe analyzed CPR quality data from treated adult OHCA occurring over a 40 month period beginning January 1, 2013 from the Rescu Epistry-cardiac arrest database. High quality CPR was defined as chest compression fraction (CCF) >0.7, compression rate >100/min and compression depth >5.0 cm. Our primary objective was to compare the proportion of resuscitations for which all CPR quality benchmarks were met between scene and transport phases of resuscitation. Our secondary objectives were to compare the quality of CPR between the scene phase and transport phase of resuscitation.ResultsThe proportion of patients with high quality CPR was similar on scene compared to during transport (45.8% vs. 42.5%; ∆ 3.3 %; 95% CI: −1.4, 8.1). Regarding individual CPR metrics, median compression rate was higher on scene compared to transport (105.8 compressions per minute (cpm) vs. 102.0 cpm; ∆ 3.8 cpm; 95% CI: 2.5, 4.0), while median compression depth (5.56 cm vs. 5.33 cm; ∆ 0.23 cm; 95% CI: 0.12, 0.26) and median CCF (0.95 vs. 0.87; ∆ 0.08; 95% CI: 0.07, 0.08) were higher during the transport phase.ConclusionsHigh quality CPR metrics were similar in both (scene and transport) locations of resuscitation. These results suggest that high quality, manual compressions can be performed by prehospital providers regardless of location.