Variation in emergency percutaneous coronary intervention in ventilated patients in the UK: Insights from a national database

British Cardiovascular Interventional Society Consensus Position Statement on Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest 1: Pathway of Care

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) affects 80,000 patients per year in the UK; despite improvements in care, survival to discharge remains lower than 10%. NHS England and several societies recommend all resuscitated OHCA patients be directly transferred to a cardiac arrest centre (CAC). However, evidence is limited that all patients benefit from transfer to a CAC, and there are significant organisational, logistic and financial implications associated with such change in policies. Furthermore, there is significant variability in interventional cardiovascular practices for OHCA. Accordingly, the British Cardiovascular Interventional Society established a multidisciplinary group to address variability in practice and provide recommendations for the development of cardiac networks. In this position statement, we recommend: the formal establishment of dedicated CACs; a pathway of conveyance to CACs; and interventional practice to standardise our approach. Further research is needed to understand the role of CACs and which interventions benefit patients with OHCA to support wide-scale changes in networks of care across the UK.

Variation in practice for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest treated with percutaneous coronary intervention in England and Wales

OBJECTIVES

We assessed the association between total center volume, operator volume, and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) volume.

BACKGROUND

Variations between OHCA PCI volume, hospital total PCI, and primary PCI volume are not well studied and are unlikely to be clinically justifiable.

METHODS

Patients undergoing PCI for the acute coronary syndrome (ACS) between January 1, 2014, and March 31, 2019, in England and Wales were grouped as OHCA PCI and non-OHCA PCI. Spearman's correlation was used to determine the degree of correlation between each hospital PCI volume and OHCA PCI volume.

RESULTS

Out of 250,088 PCI procedures undertaken for ACS, 12,016 (4.8%) were performed for OHCA, and 238,072 (95.2%) were non-OHCA PCI procedures. The OHCA PCI group were younger [mean age (SD) 63.2 (12.3) and 65.6 (12.5, p < 0.001)], less likely to be female (20.2% vs. 26.9%, p < 0.001) or Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnicity (11.5% vs. 14.8%, p < 0.001) compared to the non-OHCA PCI group. Although there was a degree of correlation between total PCI and OHCA PCI, there was wide variation for both ACS cohort (Spearman correlation R²  = 0.50) and total PCI volume (Spearman correlation R²  = 0.60). Furthermore, the correlation between primary PCI volume and OHCA PCI within centers was weak (R²  = 0.10). Similarly, wide variations between operator PCI volume and OHCA PCI volume were observed.

CONCLUSION

These national data demonstrate wide variation in the practice of OHCA PCI both between centers and individuals. These variations are not expected according to clinical factors and require further investigation.

Coronary Revascularization and Out-of-hospital Cardiac Arrest: Past, Present and Future

Cardiologists and the cardiac catheter laboratory have key roles to play in the management of patients after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Although immediate catheter laboratory activation is the standard of care in cardiogenic shock and ST elevation myocardial infarction, the majority of patients will present without these features and with an uncertain diagnosis. Even in the latter, early assessment and invasive management may be beneficial, but this is counterbalanced by significant resource utilization, potential to cause harm and the possibility that any diagnostic or therapeutic gains are offset by a poor neurological outcome. Past consensus on the management of the OHCA patient without ST elevation or cardiogenic shock is being challenged by emerging results from new trials in this field. Further randomized trials are ongoing, and are expected to deliver robust data from over 4,000 patients, allowing us to further refine the optimal management strategy in this challenging cohort. This article describes the benefits and pitfalls of a strategy of immediate coronary angiography in these patients, examines the recently published COACT and TOMAHAWK trials in detail, and describes a framework with which to approach the patient after resuscitated OHCA, based on the available evidence to date.