Survival after Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in the Hospital

Abstract

Little is known about prognostic factors that determine outcomes after in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation. We studied prospectively 294 consecutive patients who were resuscitated in a university teaching hospital. Forty-one patients (14 per cent) were discharged from the hospital; three quarters of them were still alive six months later. A multivariate analysis revealed that pneumonia, hypotension, renal failure, cancer, and a home-bound life style before hospitalization were significantly associated with in-hospital mortality (P<0.05). None of the 58 patients with pneumonia and none of the 179 in whom resuscitation took longer than 30 minutes survived to be discharged. On the other hand, fully 42 per cent of the patients who survived for 24 hours after resuscitation left the hospital.