• Pavlos Myrianthefs, Maria Kalafati, Chryssoula Lemonidou, Evegenia Minasidou, Penelope Evagelopoulou, Stylianos Karatzas, and George Baltopoulos.
• Athens University School of Nursing ICU at 'KAT' General Hospital, Nikis 2, Kifissia, 14561, Athens, Greece. p-myrianthefs@northwestern.edu
• Resuscitation. 2003 Apr 1; 57 (1): 43-8.

AimTo investigate the initial cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) success rate and long term survival in an Intensive care unit (ICU) population.PatientsAll patients with cardiac arrest over a 2-year-period (1999-2000) in a general, adult ICU of a general hospital of Athens.MethodsRetrospective collection of clinical data concerning patients, CPR characteristics and survival rates.ResultsWe examined 111 ICU patients, aged 56.4+/-1.9 years (72 males). SAPS II score was 43.9+/-3.8. CPR was performed in 98.2% of the patients within 30 s. Initial restoration of cardiac function (RCF) and successful CPR rate was 100% while 24 h survival was 9.2%. Survivors at 24 h were younger, mainly males, with lower SAPS II score, mainly with pulmonary disease, ventricular fibrillation or ventricular tachycardia (8/10) and initial pupil reactivity (5/10). Four patients required more than one cycle of CPR. Survival to discharge was zero.ConclusionAlthough the initial successful CPR rate in ICU patients may be high, long term survival and hospital discharge is disappointing. Although ICU patients are better monitored and treated in a timely fashion, they are disadvantaged by chronic underlying diseases, severe current medical illnesses and multi organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) leads to worst outcome after CPR compared with in-ward patients.

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