Abstract 11312: Activation of Citizen Responders to Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: Temporal Changes During the COVID-19 Outbreak in Denmark 2020
Introduction: Multiple citizen responder (CR) programs worldwide which dispatch laypersons to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and use of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) were affected by the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, but little is known about how the pandemic affected CR activation and initiation of bystander CPR and defibrillation. In Denmark, the CR program continued to run during lockdown but with the recommendation to perform chest-compression-only CPR in contrast to standard CPR including ventilations. We hypothesized that bystander interventions as CPR and AED usage decreased during the first COVID-19 lockdown in two regions of Denmark in the spring of 2020. Methods: All OHCAs from January 1, 2020 to June 30, 2020 with CR activation from the Danish Cardiac Arrest Registry and the National Citizen Responder database. Bystander CPR, AED usage, and CRs’ alarm acceptance rate during the national lockdown from March 11, 2020 to April 20, 2020 were compared with the non-lockdown period from January 1, 2020 to March 10, 2020 and from April 21 to June 30, 2020. Results: A total of 6,120 CRs were alerted in 443 (23/100.000 inhabitants) cases of presumed OHCA of which 256 (58%) were confirmed cardiac arrests. Bystander CPR remained equally high in the lockdown period compared with non-lockdown period (99% vs. 92%, p=0.07). Likewise, there was no change in bystander defibrillation (9% vs. 14%, p=0.4). There was a slight increase in the number of CRs who accepted an alarm (7 per alarm, IQR 4) during lockdown compared with non-lockdown period (6 per alarm, IQR 4), p=0.0001. The proportion of patients achieving return of spontaneous circulation at hospital arrival was also unchanged (lockdown 23% vs non-lockdown 23%, p=1.0) (Table 1). Conclusion: Bystander initiated resuscitation rates did not change during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark for OHCAs where CRs were activated through a smartphone app.