Prognostic values of blood pH and lactate levels in patients resuscitated from out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrest

AIM: Early prediction of prognosis after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) remains difficult. High blood lactate or low pH levels may be associated with poor prognosis in OHCA patients, but these associations remain controversial. We compared blood lactate and pH levels in OHCA patients transferred to our hospital to measure their prognostic performance. METHODS: We investigated the associations between blood lactate and pH levels on admission and neurological outcomes in 372 OHCA patients who had a return of spontaneous circulation. RESULTS: 0.001). In multivariate analysis, pH >7.05 was an independent predictor for a favorable outcome. CONCLUSION: After OHCA, patients with a favorable outcome had lower lactate and higher pH levels than those with an unfavorable outcome, but pH level was a much better predictor for neurological outcome than lactate levels.