Objective: To evaluate the activity of the Cardiac Arrest Team (CAT) from the Emergency Department, called to perform resuscitation for patients admitted in different departments of the Clinical County Hospital.
Methods: We conducted a prospective study between 01/01–12/31/2009. We included all the patients we performed CPR on, regardless of indication.
Results: We had a total of 110 cases, representing 0.28% of the 39,074 patients assisted by the department in 2009. We noticed an increased incidence of calls in internal medicine and surgery departments, with 50% and 17% of the cases respectively. The most frequent diagnosis was cardiac arrest for respiratory failure and malignant tumors, each representing 17%, even though malignancy does not have an indication for resuscitation. There was no causal relationship between the outcome of resuscitation and age groups (p = 0.552), type of wards (p = 0.36), or the Basic Life Support (BLS) performed by the staff, before the CAT arrived (p = 0.76). Medical staff from wards started BLS in 40.1% of cases, in 32% of these cases only chest compressions were performed, without ventilation.The proportion of resuscitated versus deceased cases is 49.1% to 50.9%, so immediate results are good, unfortunately the late outcome is bad, 52 cases out of the 54 died later in ICU, 2 patients being discharged in good condition.
Conclusions: CAT should be called according to Do Not resuscitate criteria. Medical staff from the wards should be trained to start CPR and have basic equipment. The early outcome is comparable with the international data, the poor late results binds to resuscitation without indication.