ORLANDO – Bystander CPR was provided in 49% of U.S. cases of pediatric out-of-hospital cardiac arrest during 2013-2014, a major improvement over the 35% rate in a prior study 15 years ago, Dr. Maryam Y. Naim reported at the American Heart Association scientific sessions.
She presented an analysis of 2,176 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) in patients up to age 18 years who were included in the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES), the nation’s largest OHCA registry. Patients with traumatic OHCA and those whose bystander CPR (BCPR) was provided by a health care professional weren’t included.
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Dr. Maryam Y. Naim
Overall, the rate of neurologically favorable survival in pediatric recipients of BCPR was 11%, compared with 7% when BCPR wasn’t provided. But the results were far more impressive in the 14% of cardiac arrests that occurred outside the home, where the rate of neurologically favorable survival in BCPR recipients was 34%, more than twice the 15% figure for nonrecipients, according to Dr. Naim, a pediatrician and cardiac intensivist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania.
Infants accounted for 47% of all pediatric OHCA, and in these youngest patients BCPR was of no benefit.
“The most common etiology of cardiac arrest in infants is sudden infant death syndrome. These are children who are found unresponsive in their cribs, and sometimes they’ve been dead a long time. We need to find something different for this population: perhaps developing a monitor to signal when an infant stops breathing or the heart rate goes down,” she said.
The fact that the BCPR rate in pediatric OHCA has climbed to 49% speaks well for public health efforts to improve education and awareness. Of those who received BCPR during 2013 and 2014, half got compression-only CPR, suggesting increasing adherence to the 2010 AHA guidelines for CPR and emergency cardiovascular care, which emphasized compression-only CPR as a viable alternative to conventional CPR, Dr. Naim added.
Her study highlighted a racial disparity in the application of BCPR in children and adolescents: Sixty percent of white youths with OHCA received BCPR, compared with 42% of blacks and 48% of Hispanics.
“About 70% of all bystander CPR was provided by a family member at home. So there’s really an opportunity there, especially in minority communities, to further increase education and awareness about bystander CPR, teaching family members to do it and also how to call 911 to start the chain of response,” she said.
Dr. Naim reported having no financial conflicts regarding her study.