Epinephrine in non-shockable cardiac arrest

For the last several years there has been this emerging idea in the resuscitation field that “drugs don't work.” Well, that idea has been challenged by this paper:

PARTICIPANTS:

119,978 adults from 570 hospitals who had a cardiac arrest in hospital with asystole (55%) or pulseless electrical activity (45%) as the initial rhythm. Of these, 83,490 arrests were excluded because they took place in the emergency department, intensive care unit, or surgical or other specialty unit, 10,775 patients were excluded because of missing or incomplete data, 524 patients were excluded because they had a repeat cardiac arrest, and 85 patients were excluded as they received vasopressin before the first dose of epinephrine. The main study population therefore comprised 25,095 patients. The mean age was 72, and 57% were men.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:

The primary outcome was survival to hospital discharge. Secondary outcomes included sustained return of spontaneous circulation, 24 hour survival, and survival with favorable neurologic status at hospital discharge.

RESULTS:

25,095 adults had in-hospital cardiac arrest with non-shockable rhythms. Median time to administration of the first dose of epinephrine was 3 minutes (interquartile range 1-5 minutes). There was a stepwise decrease in survival with increasing interval of time to epinephrine (analyzed by three minute intervals): adjusted odds ratio 1.0 for 1-3 minutes (reference group); 0.91 (95% confidence interval 0.82 to 1.00; P=0.055) for 4-6 minutes; 0.74 (0.63 to 0.88; P less than 0.001) for 7-9 minutes; and 0.63 (0.52 to 0.76; P less than 0.001) for greater than 9 minutes. A similar stepwise effect was observed across all outcome variables.

CONCLUSIONS:

In patients with non-shockable cardiac arrest in hospital, earlier administration of epinephrine is associated with a higher probability of return of spontaneous circulation, survival in hospital, and neurologically intact survival.

Via Intensive care medicine worth knowing.