Abstract 15644: Health-Related Quality of Life in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Community-Based, Age-Stratified Analysis

Abstract

Introduction: Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is affected after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), but HRQoL scores in OHCA survivors are largely reported as a homogenous group. We performed a community-based evaluation of HRQoL scores in OHCA survivors and report the results stratified by age. Methods: We captured all residents of Multnomah Co., OR, and Ventura Co., CA who survived an OHCA during 2015-2021. We consented 197 survivors into our study and asked survivors to complete the Short-Form-36 Health Survey Version 1 (SF-36) to assess HRQoL at the time of the interview. The median time from OHCA to SF-36 interview date was 10 months. Scores for the 8 health domains of the SF-36 were calculated, and we used an independent sample t-test to compare the continuous scores of OHCA survivors to age-and-sex-standardized scores in the general population. Results: Of the 185 adult survivors who completed the SF-36 interview data (94% of those consented), the mean (SD) age was 60 (15) years and 58% were male. Overall, survivors had lower physical (p=0.0002) and emotional (p=0.01) health scores and lower social function (p=0.05) compared to the general population. We observed several age-domain interactions and split our sample into 3 age categories to explore HRQoL by age. Younger individuals (age 18-44, n=23) had similar HRQoL compared to the same ages in the general population. Older individuals (age 65+, n=78) also experienced similar HRQoL but reported better general health compared to the general population. Middle-aged survivors (age 45-64, n=84) reported lower physical function (p=0.05), physical problems (p=0.0009), emotional health (p=0.04), and social function (p=0.05) scores compared to the general population (Figure). Conclusion: HRQoL scores in survivors of OHCA were affected by age and were observed to be lowest in the middle-age subgroup. Targeted interventions in middle-aged survivors may have the greatest impact on improved HRQoL following OHCA.