Acute cardiac care & resuscitationCohort study
Association of emergency physician critical care training on outcomes after non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA)
- retrospective cohort study
Authors' conclusion
Additional critical care training was associated with selected prehospital procedural measures and higher odds of hospital admission with ROSC and survival to discharge. These observational findings are hypothesis-generating and do not establish causality.
Study context
- Population
- Adult patients with non-traumatic OHCA from the Marburg-Biedenkopf emergency medical services (EMS) region from 2018 to 2024
- Participants
- 1,426 patients
- Exposure
- emergency physician qualification, with residents as reference
- Outcome
- Survival to discharge
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Odds ratio
1.59
95% CI 1.05–2.40
By group
specialists with additional critical care training vs residents
OR 1.59 (95% CI 1.05–2.40)
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Secondary outcomes
Any ROSC
| Outcome | OR (95% CI) | |
|---|---|---|
| Hospital admission with ROSC · adjusted | 1.42 (1.05–1.93) | |
| 0.512Odds ratio (log scale) |
- Any return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC): p = 0.211; did not differ significantly between groups
Operational response times and time to first ROSC
- Comparable
Vascular access and vasopressor administration
- Specialists with additional critical care training achieved faster vascular access and earlier vasopressor administration, with fewer access failures
Original publication
Association of emergency physician critical care training on outcomes after non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Resuscitation. Published 14 August 2026. doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2026.111264
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it