Sudden Cardiac Arrest in End-Stage Kidney Disease, WVU

The study entitled, "Sudden cardiac arrest in end-stage renal disease patients on dialysis: a nationwide study", published in journal "Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology", included data from more than 1 million end-stage kidney disease patients on dialysis from the United States population. The study was conducted at the West Virginia University Heart and Vascular Institute, and out of 1 million patients about 15,760 suffered cardiac arrest. Half of patients who suffered cardiac arrest ultimately died (52.10%).

“Cardiac arrest continues to claim life of dialysis patients, and even those who survived it encountered significant morbidity,” study corresponding author and lead investigator Muhammad Bilal Munir, MD told the reporters. Implantable defibrillators are recommended in certain survivors of cardiac arrest as per American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines but this study showed low rate of such implants in cardiac arrest survivors. Munir and colleagues, earlier reported from national United States database that generally defibrillators have a low trend of implantation in survivors of cardiac arrest with certain patient population more than likely to not get it (Pacing Clin Electrophysiol. 2018 Mar;41:229-237).

Cardiac arrest is common and approximately 230,000 Americans die each year due to this condition. Munir said that true prevalence of cardiac arrest may still be unknown as unfortunately most patients die before reaching a hospital as they deteriorate very fast when heart function stops due to cardiac arrest.

“We have made strides on risk stratifying cardiac arrest patients with potentially correcting underlying mechanisms leading to it, and preventing another such scenario by encouraging defibrillators in eligible patients”, Munir said in news release. “But some mechanisms still need to be understood to lessen mortality associated with this life threatening condition”, Munir concluded. -PR