• Martin Lafrance, Valentine Canon, Hervé Hubert, Brian Grunau, François Javaudin, Morgan Recher, Matthieu Heidet, GR-RéAC, and members of the SFMU cardiac arrest board.
• Univ. Lille Lille, CHU Lille, ULR 2694 - METRICS: Évaluation des Technologies de Santé et des Pratiques Médicales, F-59000 Lille, France; French National Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Registry Research Group (Registre Électronique des Arrêts Cardiaques), F-59000, Lille, France. Electronic address: martin.lafrance@univ-lille.fr.
• Resuscitation. 2023 Aug 1; 189: 109888109888.

AimWe sought to describe the characteristics of at-school out-of-hospital cardiac arrests cases, subsequent basic life support, as well as ultimate patient outcomes.MethodsThis was a nation-wide, multicentre, retrospective cohort study from the French national population-based RéAC out-of-hospital cardiac arrest registry (July 2011 - March 2023). We compared the characteristics and outcomes of cases occurring at schools vs. in other public places.ResultsOf the 149,088 national out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, 25,071 were public: 86 (0.3%) and 24,985 (99.7%) in schools and other public places, respectively. At-school out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, in comparison to other public places, were: significantly younger (median: 42.5 vs. 58 years, p < 0.001); more commonly of a medical cause (90.7% vs. 63.8%, p < 0.001), more commonly bystander-witnessed (93.0% vs. 73.4%, p < 0.001) and recipients of bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (78.8% vs. 60.6%, p = 0.001) with shorter median no-flow durations (2 min. vs. 7 min.); with greater bystander automated external defibrillator application (38.9% vs. 18.4%) and defibrillation (23.6%, vs. 7.9%; all p < 0.001). At-school patients had greater rates of return of spontaneous circulation than out-of-school ones (47.7%, vs. 31.8%; p = 0.002), higher rates of survival at arrival at hospital (60.5% vs. 30.7%; p < 0.001) and at 30-days (34.9% vs. 11.6%; p < 0.001), and survival with favourable neurological outcomes at 30 days (25.9% vs. 9.2%; p < 0.001).ConclusionAt-school out-of-hospital cardiac arrests were rare in France, however demonstrated favourable prognostic features and outcomes. The use of automated external defibrillators in at-school cases, while more common than cases occurring elsewhere, should be improved.Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

15 keywords...

hide…