• Barret Rush, Mohammad Ashkanani, Kali Romano, and Paul Hertz.
• Division of Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, Vancouver General Hospital, University of British Columbia, Room 2438, Jim Pattison Pavilion, 2nd Floor, 855 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1M9, Canada; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, 677 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115, USA. Electronic address: bar890@mail.harvard.edu.
• Resuscitation. 2017 Jan 1; 110: 141-145.

ObjectiveThe use of electroencephalogram (EEG) has been demonstrated to have diagnostic and prognostic value in cardiac arrest patients. The use of this modality across the United States in this population is unknown.MethodsThe Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) is a federal database capturing 20% of all US hospital admissions. A cohort of patients who suffered both in and out of hospital cardiac arrests from the 2006 to 2012 NIS datasets was created.ResultsThe records of 55,208,382 hospitalizations were analyzed, of which 207,703 patients suffered a cardiac arrest. There were 2952 (1.42%) patients who also had an EEG. Patients who had an EEG compared to those who did not were: younger (62.2 years SD 16.6 vs 66.9 years SD 16.2, p<0.01), were less likely to have insurance coverage (89.9% vs 91.6%, p=0.03) and had significantly longer length of stay (8.6days IQR 3.7-17.1 vs 4.1days IQR 1.0-10.5, p<0.01). Patients treated at urban teaching hospitals were more likely to receive an EEG than patients treated at urban non-teaching and rural hospitals (p<0.01). The rate of EEG in survivors of cardiac arrest increased from 1.03% in 2006 to 2.16% in 2012, a relative increase of 110% (p<0.02). The median time to performance of an EEG was 1.6days IQR 0.33-4.53 days.ConclusionEEG is performed on approximately 2% of patients who suffer cardiac arrest in the United States. The treatment hospital and patient characteristics of those who received an EEG different from those who did not.Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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