Bhubaneswar/New Delhi: According to a recent study, cardiac arrest is common in critically ill patients who are infected with COVID-19. It is also associated with poor survival rate, particularly among patients who are aged 80 years or older, say researchers.
The research findings published in ‘The BMJ’ (a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal), could help guide end-of-life care deliberations with critically ill patients infected with COVID-19 and their families.
A research team from Michigan University in the US set out to estimate the incidence, risk factors including outcomes associated with in-hospital cardiac arrest and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in critically ill adults infected with COVID-19.
Research findings of the team are based on data taken from 5,019 critically ill patients (aged 18 years or over) who were infected with COVID-19 and were admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) at 68 hospitals across the US for treatment.
Results showed that nearly 701 (14%) of the patients had in-hospital cardiac arrest within 14 days of their admission to the ICUs, of whom only 400 (57%) received CPR.
“Patients who had in-hospital cardiac arrest were older people (average age between 60 to 63 years) and had more underlying health conditions (comorbidities). They were more likely to be admitted to a hospital with fewer ICU beds,” the researchers said.
Importantly, this suggests that hospital resources, staffing, expertise, strain and/or other factors not captured in this study could have had a major impact, the researchers noted.
Patients who received CPR were younger than those who did not (average age between 61 to 67 years). Among those who did receive CPR, only 12% (48 out of 400) survived to hospital discharge and only 7 % (28 out of 400) did so with normal or mildly impaired neurological status, the researchers wrote.
Most of the patients who survived to hospital discharge needed only a short course of CPR. Survival also differed by age, with 21% of the patients younger than 45 years of age surviving were compared with 3% of those aged 80 years or older.
The researchers also pointed to some limitations, such as being unable to assess the quality and timeliness of CPR and limiting data to the initial 14 days after a patient’s admission to ICU, potentially underestimating the true rate of cardiac arrest.
However, strengths included the use of high quality, detailed data for a large number of patients who were followed until death or discharge.
Cardiac arrest is common in critically ill patients with COVID-19 infection and is associated with poor survival even when CPR is provided, the researchers noted.
PNN/IANS