Background:
Cardiac arrest (CA) is a leading cause of disability-adjusted life years (DALY) in the United States (U.S.). The National Institutes of Health (NIH) does not report annual research funding for CA. Our objective was to calculate and compare the NIH research investment for CA to other leading causes of DALY in the U.S.
Methods:
A search within NIH RePORTER for the year 2016 was performed using the following terms: cardiac arrest, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, heart arrest, circulatory arrest, pulseless electrical activity, ventricular fibrillation, or resuscitation. Grants were individually reviewed and categorized as CA research (yes/no) using predefined criteria and the sum of funding for grants meeting inclusion criteria were tabulated. DALY were calculated as the sum of years of life lost (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD) using all adult non-traumatic EMS-treated out-of-hospital CA (OHCA) from the CARES database for 2016. Total DALY for the study population were extrapolated to a national level. The leading causes of DALY were obtained from the Global Burden of Disease study. Funding data were extracted from the 2016 NIH Categorical Spending Report. Research funding were compared using U.S. dollars invested per DALY as the outcome measure.
Results:
The search yielded 285 NIH-funded grants, of which 65 (22.8%) were classified as CA research. Total NIH funding for CA research in 2016 was $28.5M. A total of 59,752 cases from CARES met study inclusion criteria for the DALY analysis. The total DALY following adult OHCA in the U.S. were 4,354,192 (YLL 4,350,825; YLD 3,365). Per annual DALY, the NIH invested $284 for diabetes, $89 for stroke, $53 for ischemic heart disease, and $7 for CA research in 2016 (FIGURE).
Conclusion:
The NIH investment into CA research is less than other leading causes of death and disability in the U.S. These results should help inform the debate regarding how to best utilize limited resources to improve public health.
The National Institutes of Health investment in research on botanicals
