Abstract 17679: Automating Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Quality Data Abstraction for Entire Episodes of Cardiac Arrest Resuscitation

Abstract

Introduction: Research and quality assessment of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) quality has traditionally been limited to the first five minutes of resuscitation due to significant costs in both time and personnel from manual data abstraction. Manual CPR quality data abstraction of entire episodes of resuscitation may be too resource-intensive for many emergency medical service (EMS) agencies and hospitals. Moreover, the first five minutes of CPR are also different in many aspects compared to later time periods during cardiac arrest resuscitation, which represents significant knowledge gaps since the majority of resuscitations go beyond five minutes. Methods: We developed a software program to facilitate and help automate data abstraction from electronic defibrillator files for entire resuscitation episodes. Internal validation of the software program was performed on 50 randomly selected out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases with resuscitation durations up to 60 minutes. CPR quality data variables were abstracted as minute averages, which included ventilation rate, CPR compression rate, depth, fraction, and end-tidal CO2. CPR quality data variables were manually abstracted independently by two trained data abstractors and automatically by the software program. Error rates and the time needed for data abstraction were measured. Results: A total of 9826 data points were abstracted. Manual data abstraction resulted in a total of six errors (0.06%) compared to zero errors by the software program. The mean time ± SD needed for data abstraction was 20.3 ± 2.7 minutes manually and 5.3 ± 1.4 minutes using the software program (p=0.003). Conclusion: Our data abstraction software was 100% accurate in abstracting CPR quality data for complete cardiac arrest resuscitation episodes. It significantly reduced the time and resources required to abstract CPR quality data, and will allow EMS agencies and hospitals to evaluate their CPR quality in a cost-effective manner. The development of this software will enable future studies to efficiently evaluate CPR quality during entire resuscitation episodes, including its impact on patient outcomes during prolonged cardiac arrests.