Long-term survival benefit from treatment at a specialty center after cardiac arrest.

INTRODUCTION: The Institute of Medicine and American Heart Association have called for tiered accreditation standards and regionalization of post-cardiac arrest care, but there is little data to support that regionalization has a durable effect on patient outcomes. We tested the effect of treatment at a high-volume center on long-term outcome after sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).
METHODS: We included patients hospitalized at one of 7 medical centers in Southwestern Pennsylvania after SCA from 2005 to 2013. Centers were one regional referral center with an organized systems for post-SCA care, two moderate volume tertiary care centers and 4 low-volume centers. We abstracted clinical characteristics and outcomes at hospital discharge, and for survivors to discharge we queried the National Death Index for long-term survival data. We used Cox regression to determine the unadjusted associations of baseline predictors and survival, and built an adjusted model controlling for baseline predictors.
RESULTS: Overall, 987 patients survived to discharge. During 2196 person-years of follow-up, median survival was 5.3 years and there were 396 deaths. In unadjusted analysis, treating center, age, arrest location, Charlson Comorbidity Index, initial rhythm, cardiac catheterization, defibrillator placement, discharge disposition, and neurological status at discharge were associated with long-term outcome. In adjusted analysis, treatment at the high-volume cardiac arrest center was associated with improved survival compared to treatment at other centers (hazards ratio 1.49, 95% confidence interval 1.19-1.86).
CONCLUSION: Treatment at a high-volume cardiac arrest center with organized systems for post-arrest care is associated with a substantial long-term survival benefit after hospital discharge.