Impact of advanced cardiac life support training program on the outcome of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in a tertiary care hospital

Abstract

Background: Guidelines on performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) have been published from time to time, and formal training programs are conducted based on these guidelines. Very few data are available in world literature highlighting the impact of these trainings on CPR outcome.

Aim: The aim of our study was to evaluate the impact of the American Heart Association (AHA)-certified basic life support (BLS) and advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) provider course on the outcomes of CPR in our hospital.

Materials and methods: An AHA-certified BLS and ACLS provider training programme was conducted in our hospital in the first week of October 2009, in which all doctors in the code blue team and intensive care units were given training. The retrospective study was performed over an 18-month period. All in-hospital adult cardiac arrest victims in the pre-BLS/ACLS training period (January 2009 to September 2009) and the post-BLS/ACLS training period (October 2009 to June 2010) were included in the study. We compared the outcomes of CPR between these two study periods.

Results: There were a total of 627 in-hospital cardiac arrests, 284 during the pre-BLS/ACLS training period and 343 during the post-BLS/ACLS training period. In the pre-BLS/ACLS training period, 52 patients (18.3%) had return of spontaneous circulation, compared with 97 patients (28.3%) in the post-BLS/ACLS training period (P < 0.005). Survival to hospital discharge was also significantly higher in the post-BLS/ACLS training period (67 patients, 69.1%) than in the pre-BLS/ACLS training period (12 patients, 23.1%) (P < 0.0001).

Conclusion: Formal certified BLS and ACLS training of healthcare professionals leads to definitive improvement in the outcome of CPR.

Keywords: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation; advanced cardiac life support; basic life support.