Predicting good outcomes after in-hospital resuscitation

In this large analysis of the Get-With-The-Guidelines registry, 11 variables predicted favorable neurologic survival (which occurred in 25% of the patients); these included patient characteristics (younger age, baseline neurologic status without disability, not intubated, normal renal/liver function, not septic, no cancer, and no hypotension before the arrest) resuscitation characteristics (initial Vfib/Vtach, defib time <2 minutes, shorter resuscitation duration) and hospital characteristics (arrest location in a monitored unit). Patients in the top decile had a 71% chance of favorable neurological survival, compared to 3% among patients in the lowest decile. These characteristics can help decision making during resuscitation (abstract)