Could Epinephrine During A Heart Attack Increase Mortality Risk?

Individuals who are administered epinephrine during resuscitation after experiencing out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) have lower rates of survival than those not given epinephrine, according to a recent study.

In order to investigate the relationship between administering epinephrine after the return of spontaneous circulation and survival rates, researchers examined the records of 1556 patients who experienced OHCA and achieved successful resuscitation from January 2000 to August 2012. Of the participants, 74% (1134) received epinephrine.
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According to researchers, 194 (17%) of the patients who received epinephrine showed successful outcomes after cardiac arrest compared to 63% (255 of the 422) of participants in the non-treated group (p <0.001).

Investigators discovered that negative effects of epinephrine occurred regardless of the resuscitation length or interventions performed in-hospital.

“These findings suggest that additional studies to determine if and how epinephrine may provide long-term functional survival benefit are needed,” they concluded.

The complete study is published in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

-Michelle Canales

Reference:

Dumas F, Bougouin W, Geri G, et al. Is epinephrine during cardiac arrest associated with worse outcomes in resuscitated patients?. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2014 December [epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2014.09.036.