Current status
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a worldwide leading cause of death and a major health issue. Despite improvements in management, the prognosis of patients resuscitated after OHCA remains poor. The high mortality after OHCA is considered to be a consequence of post-cardiac arrest syndrome (PCAS). Main components of PCAS are ischemic tissue injury, systemic inflammatory response, combining clinical features of cardiogenic with sepsis-like shock and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), ultimately leading to multiorgan failure and death.
Early goal directed therapy (EGDT) is a therapy with a specific protocol in place that is followed by physicians in the management of severe sepsis and septic shock cases. Despite the fact that EGDT implemented as soon as possible after diagnosis in septic shock patients was proven to reduce mortality in patients, data for EGDT as a strategy are scarce. Furthermore, no previous studies evaluated the efficacy of EGDT with hemodynamic and ventilatory optimization after OHCA. Due to the lack of profound knowledge, most of the current treatment strategies for PCAS are focused on direct cause of OHCA treatment and are ineffective in survival improvement.
Our solution
Our solution is to develop a decision support mobile application for the clinicians to be used when deciding on the EGDT strategy for their patients, resulting in the reduction of early mortality after OHCA. To implement an easy-to-use digital tool, enabling non-invasive, point-of-care assessment of patient’s health and providing clinical decision support based on EGDT is thus of paramount importance. Implementation of the tool will directly translate into possibility for advanced assessment of OHCA patients, irrespectively of financial status or access to invasive monitoring methods.
Research goals
The ultimate goal is to provide physicians with a simple tool - mobile application to implement early therapy that would be superior to current standard of care in managing patients after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. The expected final goal of the project is to improve the quality of care and outcomes of OHCA patients.
