Abstract
Background: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) needs emergent coronary angiography and subsequent percutaneous coronary intervention to improve their outcomes. ‘STEMI equivalents’ in electrocardiogram (ECG) are known to help the diagnosis of ACS. However, these findings have not been sufficiently evaluated among OHCA patients. This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) of ‘STEMI equivalents’ to identify ACS among OHCA patients without ST-segment elevation. Methods/Results: Nine emergency medical departments among the Comprehensive Registry of In-Hospital Intensive Care for OHCA Survival (CRITICAL) study in Osaka, Japan collected the patients' first 12 leads ECGs after return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) from 2012 to 2017. Patients with non-traumatic OHCA aged >=18 years old with ventricular fibrillation / pulseless ventricular tachycardia as first documented rhythm or rhythm at hospital arrival were included. Of them, patients without ST-segment elevation nor complete left bundle branch block were extracted. The DTAs; sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (LR+), and negative and likelihood ratio (LR-) of STEMI equivalents (i.e., Isolated T-wave inversion, Wellens signs) for the diagnosis of the ACS were evaluated. ACS was diagnosed by the physicians in each hospital based on the coronary angiography. Results: A total of 143 cases were included in the analysis and 79 patients were diagnosed as ACS. Isolated T-wave inversion was found in 7 (3.2%) patients in the ACS group and 3 (8.8%) in the non-ACS group. The Wellens signs was present in 5 (6.3%) and 5 (7.8%) patients, respectively. The isolated T-wave inversion and the Wellens signs had high specificity with 0.95 (95% CI: 0.87-0.99) and 0.92 (95% CI: 0.82-0.97), whereas these findings had low LR+ with wide range of 95% CI with 1.89 (95% CI: 0.51-7.02), and 0.81 (95% CI: 0.25-2.68), respectively. Conclusion: In this study, the DTA of STEMI equivalents of single 12 leads ECG alone were not sufficient for the diagnosis of ACS after ROSC among OHCA patients without ST-segment elevation. Further investigation of the DTA evaluation considering the measurement timing and the change of the ECG is needed.
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