Background:
Advanced cardiac life support is a corner stone in the management of cardiac arrest and epinephrine is an important part of its armamentarium. Randomized controlled trials and observational studies have demonstrated inconsistent results regarding the benefits of epinephrine in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate mortality and neurological outcomes.
Methods:
All randomized controlled trials regarding out of hospital cardiac resuscitation were sought using PubMed and Scopus databases from 1963 until June 2015. We calculated the chances of patients surviving to hospital admission and through discharge as well as having a good neurological outcome. Data was analyzed with RevMan 5.2 software.
Results:
Epinephrine was found to be associated with a higher rate of hospital arrival but not survival to discharge. Epinephrine also had numerically less favorable neurologic outcomes neurological but despite that this was seen in all trials this did not reach statistical significance (OR 0.71, CI95% 0.45-1.12, p 0.14).
Conclusion:
There is no data to support the use of epinephrine in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients. Increased unjustified financial and perhaps social costs seem to be present. Larger randomized controlled trials are needed.
Withdrawal notice to “Epinephrine for out of hospital cardiac arrest: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials” [Resuscitation 136 (2019) 54–60]
