In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: Terminating Resuscitation

Guidelines offer little guidance regarding criteria for terminating resuscitation efforts during an in-hospital cardiac arrest. In this study, Scandinavian investigators used data from ≈10,000 patients with in-hospital arrests (≈20% of whom were in intensive care units) to derive termination-of-resuscitation rules that could identify at least 10% of patients who would qualify for early termination of resuscitation and also assure that <1% of patients who would qualify actually would survive at 30 days. These rules were validated on data from 14,000 additional patients.

Using hundreds of rapidly accessible patient characteristics, investigators identified four characteristics — unmonitored status (i.e., not on telemetry), unwitnessed arrest, …