Background: This study evaluated the prehospital factors associated with better health-related quality of life for survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Methods and results: This prospective, 20-community, cohort study involved consecutive, adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients who survived to 1 year. Patients were contacted by telephone and evaluated for the Health Utilities Index Mark III (HUI3), which describes health as a utility score on a scale from 0 (dead) to 1.0 (perfect health). The 8091 cardiac arrest patients had overall survival rates of 5.2% to hospital discharge and 4.0% to 1 year. We successfully contacted and evaluated 268 of 316 (84.8%) of known 1-year survivors. The median HUI3 score was 0.80 (interquartile range, 0.50 to 0.97), which compares well with age-adjusted values for the general population (0.83). Logistic regression identified 2 factors independently associated with very good quality of life (HUI3 >0.90) and their odds ratios (95% CIs), as follows: age 80 years or older, 0.3 (0.1 to 0.84), and citizen-initiated cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), 2.0 (1.2 to 3.4) (Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit statistic, 0.74).
Conclusions: This study is the largest ever conducted for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survivors, clearly shows that these patients have good quality of life, and is the first to demonstrate that citizen-initiated CPR is strongly and independently associated with better quality of life. These results emphasize the importance of optimizing community citizen CPR readiness. Given the low rate of citizen-initiated CPR in many communities, we believe that local and national initiatives should vigorously promote the practice of bystander CPR.