Comparison of in‐hospital and out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrest outcomes in a Scandinavian community

BACKGROUND: Reported incidence and survival from in-hospital and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest show great variability, making it difficult to compare the groups. In order to eliminate effects of time and culture, we investigated out-of-hospital cardiac arrest compared with in-hospital cardiac arrest in our community over a 1-year period. METHODS: We conducted a cohort study including patients with in-hospital and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Multiple data sources were screened in order to identify all cardiac arrest patients. Utstein style data were collected prospectively from 1 December 2008 to 30 November 2009 with subsequent analysis. RESULTS: A total of 380 resuscitations because of cardiac arrest were included, 154 (40.6%) in-hospital and 226 (59.4%) out-of-hospital. The in-hospital cardiac arrest group was older, had higher proportions of witnessed cardiac arrest, bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation, bystander direct current (DC) shock and professional first rescuer. Survival to hospital discharge was 16.2% for in-hospital cardiac arrest vs. 16.8% for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. CONCLUSION: Survival from in-hospital and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in this cohort is similar.