The Postcardiac Arrest Consult Team: Impact on Hospital Care Processes for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Patients

OBJECTIVE:To evaluate whether a Post-Arrest Consult Team improved care and outcomes for patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. DESIGN:Prospective cohort study of Post-Arrest Consult Team implementation at two hospitals, with concurrent controls from 27 others. SETTING:Twenty-nine hospitals within the Strategies for Post-Arrest Care Network of Southern Ontario, Canada. PATIENTS:We included comatose adult nontraumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients surviving more than or equal to 6 hours after emergency department arrival who had no contraindications to targeted temperature management. INTERVENTION:The Post-Arrest Consult Team was an advisory consult service to improve 1) targeted temperature management, 2) assessment for percutaneous coronary intervention, 3) electrophysiology assessment, and 4) appropriately delayed neuroprognostication. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS:We used generalized linear mixed models to explore the association between Post-Arrest Consult Team implementation and performance of targeted processes. We included 1,006 patients. The Post-Arrest Consult Team was associated with a significant reduction over time in rates of withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy within 72 hours of emergency department arrival on the basis of predictions of poor neurologic prognosis (ratio of odds ratios, 0.13; 95% CI, 0.02–0.98). Post-Arrest Consult Team was not associated with improved successful targeted temperature management (ratio of odds ratios, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.31–2.65), undergoing angiography (ratio of odds ratios, 1.91; 95% CI, 0.17–21.04), receiving electrophysiology consultation (ratio of odds ratios, 0.93; 95% CI, 0.11–8.16), or functional survival (ratio of odds ratios, 0.75; 95% CI, 0.19–2.94). CONCLUSIONS:Implementation of a Post-Arrest Consult Team reduced premature withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy but did not improve rates of successful targeted temperature management, coronary angiography, formal electrophysiology assessments, or functional survival for comatose patients after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.