• Linus Lilja, Sara Joelsson, Josefin Nilsson, Sophie Lindgren, and Christian Rylander.
• Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Institute of Clinical Sciences, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden. Electronic address: linus.lilja@regionvarmland.se.
• Resuscitation. 2021 Aug 1; 165: 38-44.

IntroductionElectroencephalogram (EEG) is used in the neurological prognostication after cardiac arrest. "Highly malignant" EEG patterns classified according to Westhall have a high specificity for poor neurological outcome when applied within protocols of recent studies. However, their predictive performance when applied in everyday clinical practice has not been investigated. We studied the prognostic accuracy and the interrater agreement when standardized EEG patterns were analysed and compared to neurological outcome in a patient cohort at a tertiary centre not involved in the original study of the standardized EEG pattern classification.MethodsComatose patients treated for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest were included. Poor outcome was defined as Cerebral Performance Category 3-5. Two senior consultants and one resident in clinical neurophysiology, blinded to clinical data and outcome, independently reviewed their EEG registrations and categorised the pattern as "highly malignant", "malignant" or "benign". These categories were compared to neurological outcome at hospital discharge. Interrater agreement was assessed using Cohen's Kappa.ResultsIn total, 62 patients were included. The median (IQR) time to EEG was 59 (42-91) h after return of spontaneous circulation. Poor outcome was found in 52 (84%) patients. In 21 patients at least one of the raters considered the EEG to contain a "highly malignant" pattern, all with poor outcome (42% sensitivity, 100% specificity). The interrater agreement varied from kappa 0.62 to 0.29.Conclusion"Highly malignant" patterns predict poor neurological outcome with a high specificity in everyday practice. However, interrater agreement may vary substantially even between experienced EEG interpreters.Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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