• Jeremy A Miles, Mateo Mejia, Saul Rios, Seth I Sokol, Matthew Langston, Steven Hahn, Ephraim Leiderman, Reka Salgunan, Israa Soghier, Perminder Gulani, Keval Joshi, Virginia Chung, Joaquin Morante, Diane Maggiore, Dipan Uppal, Ari Friedman, Adarsh Katamreddy, Nathaniel Abittan, Gokul Ramani, Wakil Irfan, Wasla Liaqat, Michael Grushko, Mona Krouss, Hyung J Cho, Steven M Bradley, and Robert T Faillace.
• Department of Medicine, NYC Health and Hospitals/Jacobi (J.A.M., M.M., S.R., S.I.S., M.L., S.H., E.L., R.S., I.S., P.G., K.J., V.C., J.M., D.M., D.U., A.F., A.K., N.A., G.R., W.I., W.L., M.G., R.T.F.), Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx.
• Circ Cardiovasc Qual. 2020 Nov 1; 13 (11): e007303.

BackgroundPatients hospitalized for severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection are at risk for in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA). It is unknown whether certain characteristics of cardiac arrest care and outcomes of IHCAs during the COVID-19 pandemic differed compared with a pre-COVID-19 period.MethodsAll patients who experienced an IHCA at our hospital from March 1, 2020 through May 15, 2020, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and those who had an IHCA from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2019 were identified. All patient data were extracted from our hospital's Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation registry, a prospective hospital-based archive of IHCA data. Baseline characteristics of patients, interventions, and overall outcomes of IHCAs during the COVID-19 pandemic were compared with IHCAs in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.ResultsThere were 125 IHCAs during a 2.5-month period at our hospital during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with 117 IHCAs in all of 2019. IHCAs during the COVID-19 pandemic occurred more often on general medicine wards than in intensive care units (46% versus 33%; 19% versus 60% in 2019; P<0.001), were overall shorter in duration (median time of 11 minutes [8.5-26.5] versus 15 minutes [7.0-20.0], P=0.001), led to fewer endotracheal intubations (52% versus 85%, P<0.001), and had overall worse survival rates (3% versus 13%; P=0.007) compared with IHCAs before the COVID-19 pandemic.ConclusionsPatients who experienced an IHCA during the COVID-19 pandemic had overall worse survival compared with those who had an IHCA before the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings highlight important differences between these 2 time periods. Further study is needed on cardiac arrest care in patients with COVID-19.

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