ABSTRACT
Background: Large variation exists for out-of-hospital-cardiac-arrest (OHCA) prehospital care, but less is known about variations in post-arrest care. We sought to evaluate variation in post-arrest care in Texas as well as factors associated with higher performing hospitals. Methods: We analyzed data in Texas Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (TX-CARES), including all adult, non-traumatic OHCAs from 1/1/2014 through 12/31/ 2020 that survived to hospital admission. We first evaluated variability in provisions of post-arrest care and outcomes. We then stratified hospitals into quartiles based on their rate of survival and evaluated the association between improving quartiles and care. Lastly, we evaluated for outliers in post-arrest care and outcomes using a mixed-effect regression model. Results: We analyzed 7,842 OHCAs admitted to 146 hospitals. We identified large variations in post-arrest care, including targeted temperature management (TTM) (IQR 7.0-51.1%), left heart catheterization (LHC) (IQ 0-25%), and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) (IQR 0-10.3%). Higher performing hospital quartiles were associated with higher rates of TTM (aOR 1.42, 95% CI 1.36-1.49), LHC (aOR 2.07, 95% CI 1.92-2.23), and PCI (aOR 2.02, 95% CI 1.81-2.25); but lower rates of bystander CPR (aOR 0.90, 95% CI 0.87-0.94). We identified numerous performance outlier hospitals; 39 for TTM, 34 for PCI, 9 for survival to discharge, and 24 for survival with good neurologic function. Conclusions: Post-arrest care varied widely across Texas hospitals. Hospitals with higher rates of survival to discharge had increased rates of TTM, LHC, and PCI but not bystander CPR.
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Post-arrest care after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is critical to optimizing outcomes, but little is known about socioeconomic disparities in post-arrest care. We evaluated the association of socioeconomic status (SES) with post-arrest care and outcomes. METHODS: We included adult OHCAs surviving to hospital admission from the 2014-2020 Texas Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES) and stratified cases into SES quartiles based on census tract data. Outcomes were targeted temperature management (TTM), percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), survival to discharge, and survival with a Cerebral Performance Category (CPC) 1-2. We applied both a multivariable logistic regression and a mixed effects logistic regression, comparing lower quartiles to top quartile for outcomes. We modeled receiving hospital as a random intercept. RESULTS: We included 9,936 OHCAs. Using multivariable logistic regression and ignoring the receiving hospital, lower income had lower TTM (Q3 aOR 0.6, 95% CI 0.5-0.7; Q4 aOR 0.5, 95% CI 0.5-0.6), lower PCI (Q4 aOR 0.6, 95% CI 0.4-0.8), and lower survival with good CPC. Lower education had lower TTM (Q2 aOR 0.7, 95% CI 0.7-0.8; Q3 aOR, 0.6 95% CI 0.5-0.7; Q4 aOR 0.6, 95% CI 0.5-0.7), lower survival, and lower survival with good CPC. Lower employment had lower TTM (Q3 aOR 0.7, 95% CI 0.6-0.9; Q4 aOR 0.7, 95% CI 0.6-0.9) and survival with good CPC. These relationships for post-arrest care were not significant on mixed model analyses though. CONCLUSION: Lower SES was linked to lower rates of post-arrest care and outcomes, but many of the associations diminished when adjusting for receiving hospital random effect. Further study is needed to evaluate for inter-hospital disparities in care.
