Cardiac arrest centres

Cardiac arrest centres are hospitals providing evidence-based resuscitation treatments including emergency interventional cardiology and bundled critical care with targeted temperature management and protocolised cardiorespiratory support and prognostication. ILCOR suggests that wherever possible, adult patients with non-traumatic OHCA cardiac arrest should be treated in cardiac arrest centres. This weak recommendation is based on very low certainty evidence from a systematic review that included 21 observational studies and 1 pilot randomized trial. Of these, 17 observational studies were ultimately included in a meta-analysis. This meta-analysis found that patients cared for in cardiac arrest centres had improved survival to hospital discharge with favourable neurological outcomes and survival to hospital discharge. This survival benefit from care at cardiac arrest centres did not extend to long term survival.¹