Epidemiology and outcomes from non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Korea: A nationwide observational study

Objectives: We aimed to describe the epidemiological features and to determine the predictors for survival to discharge of non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in Korea. Subjects and methods: A nationwide Utstein style OHCA database (2006-2007) was constructed from ambulance records and hospital medical record review. Cases were enrolled when they were non-traumatic OHCA with presumed cardiac aetiology. Using the population census (2005), we calculated age-gender standardized incidence rates (SIR) and mortality (SMR). We modelled a multivariate logistic regression analysis to determine the effect of risk factors on hospital outcomes. Results: The total number of EMS-assessed non-traumatic OHCA patients was 19. 045. The SIR was 20.9 (2006) and 22.2 (2007) per 100. 000 and survival-to-discharge rate was 2.3% for EMS-assessed non-traumatic OHCA, and was 3.5% for the resuscitation-attempted group. From a multivariate logistic regression analysis, witnessed arrest, and shorter basic life support (BLS) and EMS intervals turned out to be significant predictors of good outcome in the resuscitation-attempted group. Conclusion: From a nationwide OHCA cohort, the incidence of EMS-assessed non-traumatic OHCA was found to be low. Survival-to-discharge rate in the resuscitation-attempted group was 3.5%, which was significantly associated with witnessed arrest, and shorter BLS and EMS intervals.