Importance: There are no validated decision rules for terminating resuscitation during in-hospital cardiac arrest. Decision rules may guide termination and prevent inappropriate early termination of resuscitation.
Objective: To develop and validate termination of resuscitation rules for in-hospital cardiac arrest.
Design, setting, and participants: In this prognostic study, potential decision rules were developed using a national in-hospital cardiac arrest registry from Denmark (data from 2017 to 2022) and validated using registries from Sweden (data from 2007 to 2021) and Norway (data from 2021 to 2022). Six variables (age, initial rhythm, witnessed status, monitored status, intensive care unit location, and resuscitation duration) were considered based on their bedside availability. Prognostic metrics were computed for all possible variable combinations. CIs were obtained using bootstrapping. Rules with a false-positive rate below 1% (predicting death in patients who might otherwise survive) and a positive rate of more than 10% (proportion of all cases for whom termination is proposed) were considered appropriate.
Main outcomes and measures: The primary outcome was 30-day mortality.
Results: The cohorts included 9863 Danish, 12 781 Swedish, and 1308 Norwegian patients. The overall median (IQR) age was 74 (66-81) years, 63% were male, and the median (IQR) resuscitation duration was 13 (5-23) minutes. Of 53 864 possible termination rules, 5 were identified as relevant for clinical use. The best performing rule included 4 variables (unwitnessed, unmonitored, initial rhythm of asystole, and resuscitation duration more than or equal to 10 minutes). The rule proposed termination in 110 per 1000 cardiac arrests (positive rate, 11%; 95% CI, 10%-11%) and predicted 30-day mortality incorrectly in 6 per 1000 cases (false-positive rate, 0.6%; 95% CI, 0.3%-0.9%). All 5 rules performed similarly across all 3 cohorts.
Conclusions and relevance: In this prognostic study, 5 termination of resuscitation rules were developed and validated for in-hospital cardiac arrest. The best performing rule had a low false-positive rate and a reasonable positive rate in all national cohorts. These termination of resuscitation rules may aid decision-making during resuscitation.