Critical care medicine
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Critical care medicine · Jun 2021
Meta AnalysisUse of Corticosteroids in Cardiac Arrest-A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
The objective of this systematic review was to evaluate the impact of intraarrest corticosteroids on neurologic outcomes and mortality in patients with cardiac arrest. ⋯ Our study found that there are limited high-quality data to analyze the association between corticosteroids and reducing mortality in cardiac arrest, but the available data do support future randomized controlled trials. We did find that corticosteroids given as part of a vasopressin, steroids, and epinephrine regimen in in-hospital cardiac arrest patients and for postresuscitation shock did improve neurologic outcomes, survival to hospital discharge, and surrogate outcomes that include return of spontaneous circulation and hemodynamics. We found no benefit in in-hospital cardiac arrest or out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients receiving corticosteroids only; however, a difference cannot be ruled out due to imprecision and lack of available data.