Serial disseminated intravascular coagulation score with neuron specific enolase predicts the mortality of cardiac arrest—a pilot study

BACKGROUND: Prognosis in cardiac arrest (CA) patients has been challenging. We sought to investigate prognostic value combining serial disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) score and neuron-specific enolase (NSE) in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients. METHODS: Sixty-one consecutive patients successfully resuscitated after CA were included in the analysis. DIC score and NSE levels were serially analyzed after return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC). The outcome measure was death before hospital discharge. Prognostication performance was assessed as the area under the receiver-operating characteristics curve (AUC). Hosmer-Lemeshow test was used for internal validation of predictive models. Calibration curves were drawn to visualize the results of tests. RESULTS: The NSE levels continued to increase in the first 72 h in non-survivors. In survivors, the NSE levels decreased after 48 h. Both DIC score at 48 h and NSE level at 48 h were good predictors of outcome. The AUC for predictive mortality in OHCA patients was 0.869 (95% CI, 0.781–0.956) for DIC score at 48 h combining NSE at 24 h, 0.878 (95% CI, 0.791–0.965) for DIC score at 48 h combining NSE at 48 h and 0.882 (95% CI, 0.792–0.972) for DIC score at 48 h combining NSE at 72 h, respectively. Significance of Hosmer-Lemeshow test was 0.488, 0.324, 0.011 for each combination. CONCLUSIONS: Serial DIC score combined with measurement of NSE levels is a useful and accessible tool for prognostication following OHCA.