[Freiburg Cardiac Arrest Receiving Team (CART) : Interdisciplinary solution for the acute management of non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest]

Controlled automated reperfusion of the whole body after cardiac arrest: Device profile of the CARL system

BACKGROUND

Cardiac arrest is associated with high mortality rates and severe neurological impairments. One of the underlying mechanisms is global ischemia-reperfusion injury of the body, particularly the brain. Strategies to mitigate this may thus improve favorable neurological outcomes. The use of extracorporeal cardiopulmonary membrane oxygenation (ECMO) during CA has been shown to improve survival, but available systems are vastly unable to deliver goal-oriented resuscitation to control patient's individual physical and chemical needs during reperfusion. Recently, controlled automated reperfusion of the whoLe body (CARL), a pulsatile ECMO with arterial blood-gas analysis, has been introduced to deliver goal-directed reperfusion therapy during the post-arrest phase.

METHODS

This review focuses on the device profile and use of CARL. Specifically, we reviewed the published literature to summarize data regarding its technical features and potential benefits in ECPR.

RESULTS

Peri-arrest, mitigating severe IRI with ECMO, might be the next step toward augmenting survival rates and neurological recovery. To this end, CARL is a promising extracorporeal oxygenation device that improves the early reperfusion phase after resuscitation.

[Out-of-hospital resuscitation: where are we today?]

In circulatory arrest, the first minutes and hours are crucial - rapid and adequate care can significantly increase the chances of survival. A large number of disciplines are involved in the recommendations and guidelines for out-of-hospital resuscitation. In particular, the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) as well as the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) are leading the way. Both the ambulance service and the accepting hospital are faced with major challenges in this regard. This article will illustrate the most important steps during and after resuscitation and discuss innovations.

Observational study on implications of the COVID-19-pandemic for cardiopulmonary resuscitation in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: qualitative and quantitative insights from a model region in Germany

BACKGROUND

The city of Freiburg has been among the most affected regions by the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. In out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) care, all parts of the rescue system were exposed to profound infrastructural changes. We aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of these changes in the resuscitation landscape in the Freiburg region.

METHODS

Utstein-style quantitative data on OHCA with CPR initiated, occurring in the first pandemic wave between February 27th, 2020 and April 30th, 2020 were compared to the same time periods between 2016 and 2019. Additionally, qualitative changes in the entire rescue system were analyzed and described.

RESULTS

Incidence of OHCA with attempted CPR did not significantly increase during the pandemic period (11.1/100.000 inhabitants/63 days vs 10.4/100.000 inhabitants/63 days, p = 1.000). In witnessed cases, bystander-CPR decreased significantly from 57.7% (30/52) to 25% (4/16) (p = 0.043). A severe pre-existing condition (PEC) was documented more often, 66.7% (16/24) vs 38.2% (39/102) there were longer emergency medical services (EMS) response times, more resuscitation attempts terminated on scene, 62.5% (15/24) vs. 34.3% (35/102) and less patients transported to hospital (p = 0.019). Public basic life support courses, an app-based first-responder alarm system, Kids Save Lives activities and a prehospital extracorporeal CPR (eCPR) service were paused during the peak of the pandemic.

CONCLUSION

In our region, bystander CPR in witnessed OHCA cases as well as the number of patients transported to hospital significantly decreased during the first pandemic wave. Several important parts of the resuscitation landscape were paused. The COVID-19 pandemic impedes OHCA care, which leads to additional casualties. Countermeasures should be taken.

[Quality indicators and structural requirements for Cardiac Arrest Centers-Update 2021]

Es handelt sich hierbei um ein Update der im Frühjahr 2017 erstmals beschriebenen Qualitätskriterien und strukturellen Voraussetzungen für Cardiac Arrest Zentren auf Basis der ersten Zertifizierungen und Erfahrungen. Die Kriterien wurden angepasst und konkretisiert und zum Teil zur Umsetzbarkeit im klinischen Alltag neu definiert.

[Novel aspects on causes of in-hospital cardiac arrest]

Cardiac arrest is one of the most dramatic medical emergencies. The occurence of cardiac arrest in hospitalized patients, the so called in-hospital cardiac arrest, is common and associated with high mortality. However, in-hospital cardiac arrest has received quite little attention compared to cardiac arrest occuring outside the hospital. The present article reviews the recent literature of in-hospital cardiac arrest and outlines differences in characteristics and outcome compared to out of hospital cardiac arrest. Moreover, current literature regarding occurence and outcome of in-hospital cardiac arrest in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 is concisely summarized.

[Crew resource management in emergency centers]

The treatment of critically ill patients in the emergency room poses major challenges to the treatment teams. Good teamwork is essential for patient care and patient safety. Between 60 and 70% of all errors in high-risk areas-such as medicine-are assigned to the field of "human factors". In aviation, after several aircraft disasters, the concept of "Crew Resource Management" (CRM) was developed in the 1980s to avoid such errors and has since established itself in many high-security industries. In contrast to medicine, there has long been a legal obligation in aviation to conduct regular CRM training. Introduced into medicine by anesthesiologists in 1990 because of its potential, CRM training has so far found its way into emergency medicine especially, even without it being a legal obligation. For trauma room treatment of polytrauma patients, the disciplines involved already offer a specially developed training concept in which teaching of CRM principles is the main focus (HOTT®-Schockraumsimulation). In addition to dedicated private providers of CRM training and individual concepts developed at an institutional level, several common course concepts for the care of emergency patients also integrate CRM principles to varying degrees into their curricula and teaching methods. Level IA evidence for CRM training is still missing also due to systematic difficulties not only in medicine, but also in other high-risk areas. However, further implementation of regular CRM training in medicine should not be suspended for this very reason.

Mode of Death after Extracorporeal Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation

Introduction: Extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) might be a lifesaving therapy for patients with cardiac arrest and no return of spontaneous circulation during advanced life support. However, even with ECPR, mortality of these severely sick patients is high. Little is known on the exact mode of death in these patients. Methods: Retrospective registry analysis of all consecutive patients undergoing ECPR between May 2011 and May 2020 at a single center. Mode of death was judged by two researchers. Results: A total of 274 ECPR cases were included (age 60.0 years, 47.1% shockable initial rhythm, median time-to-extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) 53.8min, hospital survival 25.9%). The 71 survivors had shorter time-to-ECMO durations (46.0 ± 27.9 vs. 56.6 ± 28.8min, p < 0.01), lower initial lactate levels (7.9 ± 4.5 vs. 11.6 ± 8.4 mg/dL, p < 0.01), higher PREDICT-6h (41.7 ± 17.0% vs. 25.3 ± 19.0%, p < 0.01), and SAVE (0.4 ± 4.8 vs. −0.8 ± 4.4, p < 0.01) scores. Most common mode of death in 203 deceased patients was therapy resistant shock in 105/203 (51.7%) and anoxic brain injury in 69/203 (34.0%). Comparing patients deceased with shock to those with cerebral damage, patients with shock were significantly older (63.2 ± 11.5 vs. 54.3 ± 16.5 years, p < 0.01), more frequently resuscitated in-hospital (64.4% vs. 29.9%, p < 0.01) and had shorter time-to-ECMO durations (52.3 ± 26.8 vs. 69.3 ± 29.1min p < 0.01). Conclusions: Most patients after ECPR decease due to refractory shock. Older patients with in-hospital cardiac arrest might be prone to development of refractory shock. Only a minority die from cerebral damage. Research should focus on preventing post-CPR shock and treating the shock in these patients.

Future call for policy making to speed up interdisciplinarity between natural and social sciences and humanities in countries such as India

OBJECTIVES

Science is the erudite methodical systematic practises to study the structure and behaviour of natural objects and/or phenomena. It clearly unknot about the fact that science is a human (society) need based process that starts with social affairs, for example, need to exchange emotion and cognitive processes (psychology), feelings (literature), relation (sociology), money (economics) etc. Humanities are the use of approaches that are predominantly hypothetical but critical, and have a noteworthy historical component, and the methodical aspects distinguish it from the mainly experiential approaches of the science. The basic approaches in both remains the same that it needs a hypothesis, sound methodology, and interpretation of data. Human is the end user in both the cases. So, why only interdisciplinary research focused on the core subjects of science? For example, philosophy, deals with general and vital complications relating to matters including existence, knowledge, language, attitude, behaviour, values, ethics, reason, mind, peace and harmony in life which can be essentially a part of science (especially natural sciences and more particularly animals sciences such as zoology) or vice versa could be true. The current and future time will allow us to believe on such concept, is the main theme of the current article.

METHODS

Articles from all published sources are considered for answering the objective that why not concentrating to speed up interdisciplinarity. Few tables and figure are reproduced or redrawn as per the need. And numerical data are collected to present the current status of the interdisciplinarity and the need of the pace it requires.

RESULTS

It is noticed that number of research articles on interdisciplinarity in comparison to several core subject area in major databases including environmental biology are still negligible. Countries still need to inter-collaborate at interdisciplinary level for the development and benefit of human race. This needs to be done mainly at socio-economic, intercultural and scientific levels. Although numbers of steps are taken such as establishment of interdisciplinary institutes, introduction of interdisciplinary courses, interdisciplinary research and publication platforms in specialized dedicated journals, still concrete steps to introduce the course of interdisciplinarity at educational and professional level is wanting.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, policy on pace in interdisciplinarity across science and humanities is highly wanting especially in developing countries to fix several national and international issues. Present article deals with the current status and future prospective or policies required on interdisciplinarity.

Myocardial infarction type 1 is frequent in refractory out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) treated with extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR)

Extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) is a last resort treatment option for refractory cardiac arrest performed in specialized centers. Following consensus recommendations, ECPR is mostly offered to younger patients with witnessed collapse but without return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC). We report findings from a large single-center registry with 252 all-comers who received ECPR from 2011-2019. It took a median of 52 min to establish stable circulation by ECPR. Eighty-five percent of 112 patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) underwent coronary angiography, revealing myocardial infarction (MI) type 1 with atherothrombotic vessel obstruction in 70 patients (63% of all OHCA patients, 74% of OHCA patients undergoing coronary angiography). Sixty-six percent of 140 patients with intra-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) underwent coronary angiography, which showed MI type 1 in 77 patients (55% of all IHCA patients, 83% of IHCA patients undergoing coronary angiography). These results suggest that MI type 1 is a frequent finding and - most likely - cause of cardiac arrest (CA) in patients without ROSC, especially in OHCA. Hospital survival rates were 30% and 29% in patients with OHCA and IHCA, respectively. According to these findings, rapid coronary angiography may be advisable in patients with OHCA receiving ECPR without obvious non-cardiac cause of arrest, irrespective of electrocardiogram analysis. Almost every third patient treated with ECPR survived to hospital discharge, supporting previous data suggesting that ECPR may be beneficial in CA without ROSC. In conclusion, interventional cardiology is of paramount importance for ECPR programs.