The Effect of Resuscitation Residents on the Duration of Pre-induction of Targeted Temperature Management in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

Background The Resuscitation Rotation is a novel second-year emergency medicine rotation focusing on the highest acuity patients, including out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). The resuscitation resident (RR) functions as an extra physician during resuscitation and post return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC). The objective of this study is to examine if the presence of a RR decreases the pre-induction interval of targeted temperature management (TTM) for patients following OHCA. Methods A retrospective study was conducted at a tertiary care level 1 trauma center with an annual ED census of 127,323 visits in 2019. We retrospectively reviewed consecutive OHCA patients from September 1, 2014, to July 20, 2020, who underwent TTM. Patients were identified as cases with or without a RR. Clinical characteristics were summarized by the status of RR involvement and compared by using t-test and χ(2) test for continuous and categorical variables, respectively. All tests with p < 0.05 were considered to indicate statistical significance. Results Our study population identified 198 adult OHCA patients that underwent TTM from 2014-2020. There were exclusions for missing TTM start time and for missing patient characteristics leaving 176 for final analysis, of which 55 (33.3%) had RR involvement. The mean time (hours) to TTM initiation (ie, the pre-induction phase) for patients involving the RR versus those without was not statistically significant (3.11 vs 3.34, p=0.39). Linear regression analysis indicates that the adjusted effect of RR involvement was not associated with the mean hours of pre-induction (p=0.47). Conclusion There is no statistically significant association of a RR on the duration of the pre-induction phase. Limitations include that both arms had prolonged pre-induction phases. This may represent a non-optimized TTM protocol. Future work will aim to use the RR to improve our pre-induction phase.