The role of prehospital advanced airway management on outcomes for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this meta-analysis was to compare the benefits of prehospital advanced airway management (AAM) and basic airway management (BAM) for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients.

Methods: Two investigators performed a systematic review of PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Database to identify all peer-reviewed articles relevant to this meta-analysis. We included all articles describing emergency medical system-treated nontraumatic OHCAs; specifically, all articles that described intervention of the prehospital AAM type were considered. The primary outcome was survival to discharge, whereas the secondary outcome was neurologic recovery after an OHCA event. For subgroup analysis, we compared the clinical outcome of endotracheal intubation (ETI), a specific type of AAM, vs BAM.

Results: We reviewed 1452 studies, 10 of which satisfied all the inclusion criteria and involved 17 380 patients subjected to AAM and 67 525 subjected to BAM. Based on the full random effects model, patients who received AAM had lower odds of survival (odds ratio [OR], 0.51; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.29-0.90) compared with BAM. Subgroup analysis for ETI vs BAM showed no significant association with respect to survival (OR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.16-1.23). There were no significant differences in the odds of neurologic recovery between AAM and BAM (OR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.03-1.37).

Conclusions: Our results reveal decreased survival odds for OHCA patients treated with AAM by emergency medical service personnel compared with BAM. However, the role of prehospital AAM, especially ETI, on achieving neurologic recovery remains unclear.