Long-term Prognosis and Neuro-psychosocial Deficits in Post-cardiac arrest Patients

Jung, Woo Jin; Kim, Hyun; Cha, Yong Sung; Kim, Oh Hyun; Kim, Tae Hoon; Kim, Yong Won; Cha, Kyoung Chul; Lee, Kang Hyun; Hwang, Sung Oh

Abstract

PURPOSE
Anoxic neurologic deficits are an important cause of morbidity and mortality in post-cardiac arrest patients. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), a series of life-saving actions, improve the chance of survival following cardiac arrest; however, there are few reports on neuropsychiatric function in patients successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest. We conducted this study to evaluate the long-term neurologic, psychiatric, and social deficits in post-cardiac arrest patients.
METHODS
We reviewed medical records from eight university hospitals from January 2009 to December 2009. Patients, older than 14 years old, successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest and with a cerebral performance category scale (CPC) 1 or 2 were enrolled. Among 56 included patients, the mean age was 57 years old and 37 patients were male. Forty-two cases were presumed to have cardiac etiology and 14 were considered to have a non-cardiac etiology. The initially recorded rhythms, in 50% of patients, were ventricular fibrillation and pulse-less ventricular tachycardia. The mean length of a hospital stay was 30 days.
RESULTS
At hospital discharge, 51 patients (91.1%) with successful resuscitation showed CPC 1 and 5 patients (8.9%) showed CPC 2. Twenty-four (42.9%) patients suffered from a variety of neuro-psychosocial deficits, such as memory disturbances, attention deficits, post-traumatic stress disorder, and difficulty initiating exercise.
CONCLUSION
Despite successful resuscitation, a considerable number of patients complained of various neuro-psychiatric deficits. The most common neuro-psychosocial deficits were disturbances in short-term memory.