Institutional resuscitation protocols: do they affect cardiopulmonary resuscitation outcomes? A 6-year study in a single tertiary-care centre

• Published in: Journal of anesthesia Vol. 29; no. 1; pp. 87 - 95
• Main Authors: Sodhi, Kanwalpreet, Singla, Manender Kumar, Shrivastava, Anupam
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tokyo Springer Japan 01.02.2015; Springer
• Subjects: Anesthesiology; Cardiac arrest; Cardiopulmonary resuscitation; Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation - education; Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation - standards; Care and treatment; Complications and side effects; Critical Care Medicine; Emergency Medical Services; Emergency Medicine; Heart Arrest - therapy; Humans; India; Intensive; Life Support Care; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Original Article; Pain Medicine; Patient outcomes; Prospective Studies; Resuscitation - education; Resuscitation - standards; Retrospective Studies; Risk factors; Survival Analysis; Tertiary Care Centers; Treatment Outcome; India; United Kingdom; Code blue; BLS/ACLS training; Institutional protocols; Cardiopulmonary resuscitation; Cardiac arrest
• ISSN: 0913-8668; 1438-8359
• DOI: 10.1007/s00540-014-1873-z

Purpose Despite advances in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and widespread life-support trainings, the outcomes of resuscitation are variable. There is a definitive need for organizational inputs to strengthen the resuscitation process. Our hospital authorities introduced certain changes at the organizational level in our in-house resuscitation protocol. We aimed to study the impact of these changes on the outcomes of resuscitation. Methods The hospital code blue committee decided to reformulate the resuscitation protocols and reframe the code blue team. Various initiatives were taken in the form of infrastructural changes, procurement of equipment, organising certified training programs, conduct of mock code and simulation drills etc. A prospective and retrospective observational study was made over 6 years: a pre-intervention period, which included all cardiac arrests from January 2007 to December 2009, before the implementation of the program, and a post-intervention period from January 2010 to December 2012, after the implementation of the program. The outcomes of interest were response time, immediate survival, day/night survival and survival to discharge ratio. Results 2,164 in-hospital cardiac arrests were included in the study, 1,042 during the pre-intervention period and 1,122 during the post-intervention period. The survival percentage increased from 26.7 to 40.8 % ( p  < 0.05), and the survival to discharge ratio increased from 23.4 to 66.6 % ( p  < 0.05). Both day- and night-time survival improved ( p  < 0.05) and response time improved from 4 to 1.5 min. Conclusions A strong hospital-based resuscitation policy with well-defined protocols and infrastructure has potential synergistic effect and plays a big role in improving the outcomes of resuscitation.