Therapeutic and adverse effects of adrenaline on patients who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a systematic review and meta-analysis

OBJECTIVE: The efficacy and safety of epinephrine in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) remains controversial. The meta-analysis was used to comprehensively appraise the influence of epinephrine in OHCA patients. METHODS: We searched all randomized controlled and cohort studies published by PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library from the inception to August 2022 on the prognostic impact of epinephrine on patients with OHCA. Survival to discharge was the primary outcome, while the return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) and favorable neurological outcome were secondary outcomes. RESULTS: The meta-analysis included 18 studies involving 863,952 patients. OHCA patients with adrenaline had an observably improved chance of ROSC (RR 2.81; 95% CI 2.21–3.57; P = 0.001) in randomized controlled studies, but the difference in survival to discharge (RR 1.27; 95% CI 0.58–2.78; P = 0.55) and favorable neurological outcomes (RR 1.21; 95% CI 0.90–1.62; P = 0.21) between the two groups was not statistically significant. In cohort studies, the rate of ROSC (RR 1.62; 95% CI 1.14–2.30; P = 0.007) increased significantly with the adrenaline group, while survival to discharge (RR 0.73; 95% CI 0.55–0.98; P = 0.03) and favorable cerebral function (RR 0.42; 95% CI 0.30–0.58; P = 0.001) were lower than the non-adrenaline group. CONCLUSION: We found that both the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and cohort studies showed that adrenaline increased ROSC in OHCA patients. However, they were unable to agree on a long-term prognosis. The cohort studies showed that adrenaline had an adverse effect on the long-term prognosis of OHCA patients (discharge survival rate and good neurological prognosis), but adrenaline had no adverse effect in the RCTs. In addition to the differences in research methods, there are also some potential confounding factors in the included studies. Therefore, more high-quality studies are needed to fully confirm the effect of adrenaline on the long-term results of OHCA.