- Email: [email protected]
Reply to Letter: The importance of comorbidity and illness severity scores in cardiac arrest research
Resuscitation 102 (2016) e4
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Resuscitation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resuscitation
Reply to Letter to the Editor Reply to Letter: The importance of comorbidity and illness severity scores in cardiac arrest research
that cannot be used to evaluate chances of (a neurologic favorable) outcome before the OHCA occurred. Conflict of interest statement
Sir, None declared. We read with interest the comment made by Dr. Fouche on our study on comorbidity and favorable neurologic outcome after outof-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in patients of 70 years and older. We agree with Dr. Fouche that co-morbidities may have a significant impact on mortality. Using the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) as a binary variable may indeed have its limitations when predicting outcome after OHCA. Dr. Fouche suggests adjusting for the Pittsburgh Cardiac Arrest Category (PCAC) illness severity score when studying outcome. The PCAC is highly predictive of survival after OHCA. However, the main focus of our study was to evaluate factors that can actually be discussed by the general practitioner or treating physician with the patient in the context of advance care planning. The PCAC score is determined in hospital, after the cardiac arrest took place. Therefore, we regard the PCAC score as a result of the cardiac arrest
DOI of original article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2016.01.035. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2016.02.028 0300-9572/© 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
S.G. Beesems ∗ M.T. Blom M. Hulleman R.W. Koster Department of Cardiology, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 22660, 1100 DD Amsterdam, The Netherlands ∗ Corresponding
author. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.G. Beesems) 19 February 2016
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Resuscitation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resuscitation
Reply to Letter to the Editor Reply to Letter: The importance of comorbidity and illness severity scores in cardiac arrest research
that cannot be used to evaluate chances of (a neurologic favorable) outcome before the OHCA occurred. Conflict of interest statement
Sir, None declared. We read with interest the comment made by Dr. Fouche on our study on comorbidity and favorable neurologic outcome after outof-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in patients of 70 years and older. We agree with Dr. Fouche that co-morbidities may have a significant impact on mortality. Using the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) as a binary variable may indeed have its limitations when predicting outcome after OHCA. Dr. Fouche suggests adjusting for the Pittsburgh Cardiac Arrest Category (PCAC) illness severity score when studying outcome. The PCAC is highly predictive of survival after OHCA. However, the main focus of our study was to evaluate factors that can actually be discussed by the general practitioner or treating physician with the patient in the context of advance care planning. The PCAC score is determined in hospital, after the cardiac arrest took place. Therefore, we regard the PCAC score as a result of the cardiac arrest
DOI of original article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2016.01.035. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2016.02.028 0300-9572/© 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
S.G. Beesems ∗ M.T. Blom M. Hulleman R.W. Koster Department of Cardiology, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 22660, 1100 DD Amsterdam, The Netherlands ∗ Corresponding
author. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.G. Beesems) 19 February 2016