Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
To the Editor,
We express our gratitude to Romain Jouffroy and Benoît Vivien for their valuable commentary on our manuscript titled "Results from 237 extracorporeal membrane oxygenation runs with drowned patients: a nationwide retrospective study" [1, 2]. These colleagues suggest an analysis of drowned patients managed solely by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) alone versus those with the combination of CPR and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Needless to say, that this approach can be an important and insightful sub-analysis of our data set.
Anzeige
The primary objective of our manuscript was to examine the variance among all hospitalized drowning cases, focusing on the comparison of outcomes between those treated with ECMO and those without. Pursuant to this objective, and in light of the sub-analysis proposed by Jouffroy et al., we examined all patients subjected to in-hospital (OPS 8–77*) and out-of-hospital (ICD U69.13!) CPR following drowning events between 2018 and 2020. Due to a change in coding for in-hospital resuscitation and out-of-hospital resuscitation, this short timeframe had to be selected. Using propensity score matching based on age and Elixhauser Score, each patient of the ECMO group was matched with a patient of the non-ECMO group with similar characteristics (Table 1), hence of 122 drowned patients 50% (n = 61) received CPR only and 50% (61) received CPR and ECMO [3]. Mortality was 86.9% (n = 53) for the ECMO group and 55.7% (n = 34) for the non-ECMO group. Logistic regression analysis showed a significant association of increased hospital mortality with V-A ECMO (OR 22.907, CI: 3.652–143.695) and a protective effect for hypertension (OR 0.086, CI: 0.013–0.59) (Fig. 1). Notably, this sub-analysis demonstrated a significantly elevated mortality in the ECMO group compared to the non-ECMO patients. Both groups, after propensity score matching, showed no significant difference in disease severity, measured via the Elixhauser Score (ECMO n = 13, IQR: 8–19; Non-ECMO n = 11, IQR: 5–20; p = 0.66). The potential differences that could have been revealed by clinically established scores, such as SOFA or SAPS II, remain a limitation of our data set [4, 5].
Table 1
Patient characteristics for resuscitated drowned patients
To address another important point made by Jouffroy et al. regarding the use of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) predictors, we acknowledge that the database's constraints limit further analysis [2, 6]. It is indeed surprising, both clinically and in the context of the literature, how a better survival with a stroke is associated in drowned patients. Smaller sample size may contribute, and outcomes might be a product of the sample at hand, potentially reversing in other scenarios and relying on secondary data can introduce inherent biases. Strokes might be under-diagnosed in non-survivors due to early fatalities, whereas survivors receive more comprehensive diagnostics. However, our sub-analysis of resuscitated drowned patients did not reproduce this finding.
Regarding the comment about potential censors in the multivariate logistic regression, such as chronic pulmonary disease, it is imperative to clarify that our logistic model, which was processed on the servers of the Federal Statistical Office, contained uncensored data. The censorship of our published results is solely for privacy and data protection reasons, and therefore, a censored value may be 1 or 2.
In conclusion, our sub-analysis vividly illustrates an extremely high mortality rate of more than 86% for resuscitated patients on ECMO, with a significantly increased in-hospital mortality associated with V-A ECMO. As previously emphasized, further studies are urgently required to evaluate the tangible benefits of ECMO therapy for resuscitated drowning victims.
Anzeige
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Federal Statistical Office of Germany for their support and provision of data.
Declarations
Ethics approval and consent to participate
The Federal Statistical Office provided all data used. Due to institutional anonymisation, no conclusions about individual patients can be drawn. According to §21KHEntgG, reimbursement data are free for scientific use. The Ethics Committee of the University Hospital Frankfurt waived the need for ethical committee approval for this study (Ref: 2022–766). All data processing was performed according to the Declaration of Helsinki.
Consent for publication
Not applicable.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Der optimale Ansatz für die Blutdruckkontrolle bei Patientinnen und Patienten mit akutem Schlaganfall ist noch nicht gefunden. Ob sich eine frühzeitige Therapie der Hypertonie noch während des Transports in die Klinik lohnt, hat jetzt eine Studie aus China untersucht.
Laut einer Studie aus den USA und Kanada scheint es bei der Reanimation von Kindern außerhalb einer Klinik keinen Unterschied für das Überleben zu machen, ob die Wiederbelebungsmaßnahmen während des Transports in die Klinik stattfinden oder vor Ort ausgeführt werden. Jedoch gibt es dabei einige Einschränkungen und eine wichtige Ausnahme.
Eine ältere Frau trinkt regelmäßig Sennesblättertee gegen ihre Verstopfung. Der scheint plötzlich gut zu wirken. Auf Durchfall und Erbrechen folgt allerdings eine Hyponatriämie. Nach deren Korrektur kommt es plötzlich zu progredienten Kognitions- und Verhaltensstörungen.
In der Notaufnahme wird die Chance, Opfer von häuslicher Gewalt zu identifizieren, von Orthopäden und Orthopädinnen offenbar zu wenig genutzt. Darauf deuten die Ergebnisse einer Fragebogenstudie an der Sahlgrenska-Universität in Schweden hin.
Update AINS
Bestellen Sie unseren Fach-Newsletter und bleiben Sie gut informiert.