Association between the Cardiac Arrest Hospital Prognosis (CAHP) score and reason for death after successfully resuscitated cardiac arrest

Individualize treatment after cardiac arrest could potentiate future clinical trials selecting patients most likely to benefit from interventions. We assessed the Cardiac Arrest Hospital Prognosis (CAHP) score for predicting reason for death to improve patient selection. Consecutive patients in two cardiac arrest databases were studied between 2007 and 2017. Reasons for death were categorised as refractory post-resuscitation shock (RPRS), hypoxic-ischaemic brain injury (HIBI) and other. We computed the CAHP score, which relies on age, location at OHCA, initial cardiac rhythm, no-flow and low-flow times, arterial pH, and epinephrine dose. We performed survival analyses using the Kaplan–Meier failure function and competing-risks regression. Of 1543 included patients, 987 (64%) died in the ICU, 447 (45%) from HIBI, 291 (30%) from RPRS, and 247 (25%) from other reasons. The proportion of deaths from RPRS increased with CAHP score deciles; the sub-hazard ratio for the tenth decile was 30.8 (9.8–96.5; p < 0.0001). The sub-hazard ratio of the CAHP score for predicting death from HIBI was below 5. Higher CAHP score values were associated with a higher proportion of deaths due to RPRS. This score may help to constitute uniform patient populations likely to benefit from interventions assessed in future randomised controlled trials.