Cardiac arrest and its epidemiologic variables in an emergency room

Introduction

Cardiac arrest is the sudden interruption of ventricular and respiratory activities, sufficient equipment for the maintenance of life. Atherosclerosis is the most frequent cause, although in Brazil there is Chagas disease and its arrhythmias.

Methods

A retrospective analysis of 66 adults admitted to our emergency room in cardiac arrest in 2004. A series of clinical and epidemiologic variables was evaluated. They included: sex, age, causes, electrocardiographic rate, comorbidity, and time between the arrest and the beginning of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Comparison was made between the findings of the retrospective analysis and the literature. The literature search was carried out through the electronic databases Medline and LILACS in January 2007.

Conclusion

The average age, the causes and the electrocardiographic rate are concordant with the studied literature. We could not correlate the time between the arrest and the beginning of cardiopulmonary resuscitation with the prognosis. We demonstrated a high rate of mortality, 83%, as in the literature. The unsuitable filling in of the hospital cards did contribute to the small number of analysed cases. However, the results demonstrate the urgency of accurate filling of the hospital charts and also for the publication of this type of research, due to the lack of this information in the literature.