Diagnostic Yield of Imaging After Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

Patients who achieve return of spontaneous circulation after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are usually not in a position to give a meaningful history, and physical examination is often unrevealing. This lack of information leaves clinicians with few bedside tools for identifying treatable sources of the arrest. These authors systematically identified 17 studies that reported the diagnostic yield of noninvasive imaging (computed tomography [CT], MRI, echocardiography, or ultrasound) in adult patients who were resuscitated after cardiac arrest.

In nine studies that reported the yield of head CT, 17% of patients had intracranial hemorrhage and 12% had acute stroke. In four studies, chest CT was obtained in 310 patients and identified 10% with …