COVID-19 OOHCA study [COVID-19]
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in a UK emergency medical service during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic 2020: a retrospective observational study using emergency medical service registry data.
IRAS ID
287637
Contact name
Scott Munro
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Surrey
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 1 days
Research summary
The research question being addressed by this study is:\nDid the survival to discharge rates of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients differ during the 1st February 2019 – 30th June 2019 (period 1 (P1)) compared to 1st February 2020 – 30th June 2020 (period 2 (P2)) Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (2019), causing the virus COVID-19, had its first reported cases directly related to an animal market in Wuhan Province, China. The World Health Organisation (WHO, 2020) initially declared an international public health emergency on January 31 2020, with pandemic classification being issued on March 11 2020. As of July 12th 2020, the UK has 290,133 cases tested positive for coronavirus, with 44,830 virus related deaths (Department of Health and Social Care, 2020). The association between COVID-19 and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is uncertain (Baldi et al. 2020). Understanding the impact of the first wave of COVID-19 on EMS response to OHCA may assist in planning resources, equipment and protective personal equipment, understanding potential risk to patients and staff for a potential second wave of COVID-19, or other respiratory viral pandemics in the future. OHCA has been suggested as a valuable surrogate for population health and efficacy of health-care systems in handling emergencies (Marijon et al., 2020). All out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients where resuscitation attempts were made during P1 and P2 will be included. A retrospective analysis of de-identified routinely collected cardiac arrest data will be used for this study, therefore there is no direct participant involvement.The participants will be recruited from the South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb), located in the South East region of England, covering Kent, Surrey, Sussex and areas of Hampshire.
REC name
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REC reference
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