Simultaneous external validation of various cardiac arrest prognostic scores: a single-center retrospective study

Takeshi Wada,Kunihiko Maekawa,Kota Ono,Tomonao Yoshida,Kenichi Katabami,Takumi Tsuchida,Mineji Hayakawa

doi:10.1186/s13049-021-00935-w

Abstract

BackgroundThis study aimed to compare and validate the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA); cardiac arrest hospital prognosis (CAHP); non-shockable rhythm, unwitnessed arrest, long no-flow or long low-flow period, blood pH < 7.2, lactate > 7.0 mmol/L, end-stage chronic kidney disease, age ≥ 85 years, still resuscitation, and extracardiac cause (NULL-PLEASE) clinical; post-cardiac arrest syndrome for therapeutic hypothermia (CAST); and revised CAST (rCAST) scores in OHCA patients treated with recent cardiopulmonary resuscitation strategies.MethodsWe retrospectively collected data on adult OHCA patients admitted to our emergency department between February 2015 and July 2018. OHCA, CAHP, NULL-PLEASE clinical, CAST, and rCAST scores were calculated based on the data collected. The predictive abilities of each score were tested using the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.ResultsWe identified 236 OHCA patients from computer-based medical records and analyzed 189 without missing data. In OHCA patients without bystander witnesses, CAHP and OHCA scores were not calculated. Although the predictive abilities of the scores were not significantly different, the NULL-PLEASE score had a large AUC of ROC curve in various OHCA patients. Furthermore, in patients with bystander-witnessed OHCA, the NULL-PLEASE score had large partial AUCs of ROC from sensitivity 0.8–1.0 and specificity 0.8–1.0.ConclusionsThe NULL-PLEASE score had a high, comprehensive predictive ability in various OHCA patients. Furthermore, the NULL-PLEASE score had a high predictive ability for good and poor neurological outcomes in patients with bystander-witnessed OHCA.

Highlights

This study aimed to compare and validate the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA); cardiac arrest hospital prognosis (CAHP); non-shockable rhythm, unwitnessed arrest, long no-flow or long low-flow period, blood pH < 7.2, lactate > 7.0 mmol/L, end-stage chronic kidney disease, age ≥ 85 years, still resuscitation, and extracardiac cause (NULL-PLEASE) clinical; post-cardiac arrest syndrome for therapeutic hypothermia (CAST); and revised CAST scores in OHCA patients treated with recent cardiopulmonary resuscitation strategies
The post-cardiac arrest syndrome for therapeutic hypothermia (CAST) score and revised CAST score were developed to predict the neurologic prognosis in patients after resuscitation following cardiac arrest, prior to inducing therapeutic hypothermia [10, 11]
Because the two predictive scores require noflow time, which we were only able to evaluate in patients with bystander-witnessed OHCA, area under the curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves of CAHP and OHCA scores were not evaluated in all patients

Summary

Introduction

This study aimed to compare and validate the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA); cardiac arrest hospital prognosis (CAHP); non-shockable rhythm, unwitnessed arrest, long no-flow or long low-flow period, blood pH < 7.2, lactate > 7.0 mmol/L, end-stage chronic kidney disease, age ≥ 85 years, still resuscitation, and extracardiac cause (NULL-PLEASE) clinical; post-cardiac arrest syndrome for therapeutic hypothermia (CAST); and revised CAST (rCAST) scores in OHCA patients treated with recent cardiopulmonary resuscitation strategies. The OHCA and CAHP scores require “no-flow interval,” which is the time from cardiac arrest to the initiation of CPR, to calculate the prediction scores. The “non-shockable rhythm, unwitnessed arrest, long no-flow or long low-flow period, blood pH < 7.2, lactate > 7.0 mmol/L, end-stage chronic kidney disease, age ≥ 85 years, still resuscitation, and extracardiac cause” (NULL-PLEASE) clinical score was devised to identify patients unlikely to survive out-ofhospital cardiac arrest using several unfavorable cardiac arrest- or patient-related characteristics [7]. The variables required to calculate each predictive score are summarized in Table 1 [4, 6, 7, 10, 11]

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