Current trends and outcomes of extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Japan: A nationwide observational study

AIM: The present study aimed to describe the prevalence, prognosis and annual trends of extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients, using a nationwide inpatient database in Japan. METHODS: This was a nationwide retrospective cohort study, using the Japanese Diagnosis Procedure Combination inpatient database. We included OHCA patients registered in the database from July 2010 to March 2017 and analyzed the annual prevalence of OHCA patients who received ECPR. The outcomes included survival to hospital discharge and survival with favorable neurologic outcome at hospital discharge. The annual trends on the outcomes were also analyzed. RESULTS: We identified 217,907 eligible patients. OHCA patients were divided into patients with ECPR (n = 5,612) and conventional CPR (n = 212,295). The prevalence of ECPR performed in OHCA patients was 2.6%. ECPR prevalence significantly increased from 2.1% in 2010 to 3.0% in 2016 (P < 0.001). Overall survival to hospital discharge was 16.4% and 2.7% in patients with ECPR and conventional CPR, respectively. Prevalence of patients who were discharged from hospital with favorable neurologic outcome was 12.4% and 1.6% in those with ECPR and conventional CPR, respectively. Increasing age was associated with progressively deteriorating outcomes. The trend of survival to hospital discharge significantly increased on an annual basis. CONCLUSIONS: The annual prevalence of ECPR significantly increased from 2010 to 2016. Improvements in overall survival to hospital discharge were noted for ECPR in OHCA patients and there was a trend in the tendency for ECPR patients discharged from the hospital to have favorable neurologic outcomes.