Intensive care–treated cardiac arrest: a retrospective study on the impact of extended age on mortality, neurological outcome, received treatments and healthcare-associated costs

Background Cardiac arrest (CA) is a leading cause of death worldwide. As population ages, the need for research focusing on CA in elderly increases. This study investigated treatment intensity, 12-month neurological outcome, mortality and healthcare-associated costs for patients aged over 75 years treated for CA in an intensive care unit (ICU) of a tertiary hospital. Methods This single-centre retrospective study included adult CA patients treated in a Finnish tertiary hospital’s ICU between 2005 and 2013. We stratified the study population into two age groups: <75 and ≥ 75 years. We compared interventions defined by the median daily therapeutic scoring system (TISS-76) between the age groups to find differences in treatment intensity. We calculated cost-effectiveness by dividing the total one-year healthcare-associated costs of all patients by the number of survivors with a favourable neurological outcome. Favourable outcome was defined as a cerebral performance category (CPC) of 1–2 at 12 months after cardiac arrest. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify independent associations between age group, mortality and neurological outcome. Results This study included a total of 1,285 patients, of which 212 (16