Background: In Japan, extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) became popular for cardiac arrest patients who resist conventional advanced life supports. Regardless of many clinical experiences, there has been no previous systematic literature review.
Methods: Case series, reports and proceedings of scientific meeting about ECPR for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest written in Japanese between January 1, 1983 and July 31, 2007 were collected with Japana Centra Revuo Medicina (medical publication database in Japan) and review by experts. The outcome and characteristics of the patients were investigated, and the influence of publication bias of the case series study was also examined by the Funnel Plot method.
Results: There were 951 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients who received ECPR in 92 reports (including 59 case series and 33 case reports) during the period. The average of age was 38.1 (4 – 88) years old and 76.1% was male. Three hundreds and eighty-one cases (40.1%) were arrests of cardiac etiology, and 212 were non-cardiac (22.3%). The cause of arrest was not described in other 37.6%. Excluding reports for only one case, weighted survival rate at discharge of 792 cases those were clearly described the outcome was 39.5±10.0%. When the relationship between the number of cases and the survival rate at discharge in each 59 case series study was shown in figure
by the Funnel Plot method, the plotted data presented the reverse-funnel type that centered on the average of survival rate of all.
Conclusions: The influence of publication bias of previous reports in Japan was relatively low. ECPR can greatly contribute to improve the outcome of out-of hospital cardiac arrests.
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