Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: Is Brain the Cause?

Acute coronary syndrome is the main etiology for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), but identification of patients who arrest secondary to neurologic causes would be useful to guide initial postresuscitative management. Investigators performed a retrospective review of adult patients with nontraumatic OHCA and return of spontaneous circulation who were admitted to the intensive care units of three referral centers in France during 13 years. All patients underwent brain computed tomography. Each patient with a primary neurologic cause of OHCA (subarachnoid hemorrhage, ischemic stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage) was compared with two randomly selected patients with OHCA of nonneurologic etiology.

Of 3710 patients, 86 (2.3%) suffered OHCA fr…