Current termination of resuscitation (TOR) guidelines predict neurologically favorable outcome in Japan.

BACKGROUND: It is unclear whether the basic life support (BLS) and advanced life support (ALS) pre-hospital termination of resuscitation (TOR) rules developed in North America can be applied successfully to patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in other countries.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the performance of the BLS and ALS TOR in Japan.

METHODS: Retrospective nationwide, population-based, observational cohort study of consecutive OHCA patients with emergency responder resuscitation attempts from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2009 in Japan. The BLS TOR rule has 3 criteria whereas the ALS TOR rule includes 2 additional criteria. We extracted OHCA patients meeting all criteria for each TOR rule, and calculated the specificity and positive predictive value (PPV) of each TOR rule for identifying OHCA patients who did not have neurologically favorable one-month survival.

RESULTS: During the study-period, 151,152 cases were available to evaluate the BLS TOR rule, and 137,986 cases to evaluate the ALS TOR rule. Of 113,140 patients that satisfied all three criteria for the BLS TOR rule, 193 (0.2%) had a neurologically favorable one-month survival. The specificity of BLS TOR rule was 0.968 (95% CI: 0.963-0.972), and the PPV was 0.998 (95% CI: 0.998-0.999) for predicting lack of neurologically favorable one-month survival. Of 41,030 patients that satisfied all five criteria for the ALS TOR rule, just 37 (0.1%) had a neurologically favorable one-month survival. The specificity of ALS TOR rule was 0.981 (95% CI: 0.973-0.986), and the PPV was 0.999 (95% CI: 0.998-0.999) for predicting lack of neurologically favorable one-month survival.

CONCLUSIONS: The prehospital BLS and ALS TOR rules performed well in Japan with high specificity and PPV for predicting lack of neurologically favorable one-month survival in Japan. However, the specificity and PPV were not 1000 and we have to develop more specific TOR rules.