March 16, 2022

We investigated the effects substance-related cardiac arrests (SRCA) in patients who failed to regain consciousness after resuscitation on severe cerebral edema development, a neuroimaging intermediate endpoint for neurologic injury. Patients for whose cardiac arrests could be attributed to substance-use were more likely to develop severe cerebral edema compared to patients whose cardiac arrests were not due to subtance-use. SRCA patients had higher proportion of brain deaths compared to non-SRCA patients. However, there were no statistically significant differences in discharge outcomes or survival between SRCA and non-SRCA patients which may be related to the higher rate of withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment (WLST) in the non-SRCA group. Future neuroprognostic studies may opt to focus on neuroimaging markers as intermediate measures of neurologic injury as these are not influenced by WLST decisions.

Read the full article here in Resuscitation