Success in Resuscitating Critically Ill Patients: Implications for COVID-19

Healthcare providers have been discussing the implications of treating patients with COVID-19 undergoing cardiac arrest. Questions involve whether intervention is futile and thus poses unjustified risks to healthcare workers. Some hospitals have even considered universal do-not-resuscitate orders. Although it is too early to have U.S. data on resuscitation of patients with COVID-19, investigators using the U.S. Get With the Guidelines — Resuscitation registry hoped to inform this discussion by providing empiric data on cardiac arrest survival in patients with pneumonia or sepsis.

The researchers restricted the cohort to 5690 people in intensive care units (ICUs) with a diagnosis of pneumonia or sepsis who underwent cardiopulmonary resuscitat…