• Pauline van Gils, Caroline van Heugten, Simone Sep, Véronique Moulaert, Jeannette Hofmeijer, and Jeanine Verbunt.
• Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands; Clinical Neurophysiology (CNPH), TechMed Centre, University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands; Limburg Brain Injury Center, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands. Electronic address: c.vangils@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
• Resuscitation. 2022 Nov 1; 180: 596359-63.

AimCardiac arrest survivors are at risk of long-term cognitive impairment. Patients with cognitive impairments do not always have cognitive complaints and vice versa. Not reporting cognitive complaints could be caused by a lack of awareness. We hypothesized that caregivers report more cognitive failures than patients, indicating patients' lack of insight into cognitive functioning.MethodsThis is a secondary analysis of the Activity and Life After Survival of Cardiac Arrest study on survivors of cardiac arrest and their caregivers. They were assessed at two weeks, three months, and one year after cardiac arrest. At each time point, the patient and the caregiver filled out the cognitive failure questionnaire (CFQ) regarding the patient. We analysed the correlation, intraclass correlation, and self-proxy discrepancy between patients and caregivers on the CFQ over time.ResultsOne-hundred-and-nineteen cardiac arrest survivors (mean age = 60, 85 % male) and their caregivers were included. The CFQ scores of the patients and caregivers were equally low. The correlation (T1 r = 0.31; T2 r = 0.40; T3 r = 0.55) and intraclass correlation (T1 r = 0.48; T2 r = 0.56; T3 r = 0.71) between patient and caregiver increased over time.ConclusionThis study does not support a lack of awareness of cognitive impairments by long-term cardiac arrest survivors. Future research may focus on alternative explanations for why patients have less cognitive complaints than expected based on the frequency of cognitive impairments. Possible explanations include a response shift.Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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