Time for consensus: establishing core outcomes meaningful to survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

Abstract

More people are surviving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) than ever before, yet meaningful functional recovery and reintegration into daily life remain uncertain for many survivors.1,2 Current clinical guidelines, consensus statements, and quality standards all emphasize the importance of systematically measuring quality of life, functional impairments, cognitive deficits and psychopathology. Survivors’ outcome measures are primarily used in three key areas: firstly, in clinical practice, where outcome measures enable identification and monitoring of survivors’ individual problems; secondly, in clinical registries and observational research studies, to better understand the epidemiology of cardiac arrest survivorship; and thirdly, in interventional research studies to determine and compare the effect of survivor aftercare intervention