Acute cardiac care & resuscitationCohort study
Incessant versus recurrent refractory ventricular fibrillation: classification and prognosis in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest
- retrospective cohort investigation
Authors' conclusion
Different methods classifying VF shock response produced excellent agreement. Recurrent-mixed-incessant shock responses were associated with progressive decline in favorable outcome, highlighting a measurable phenotype to direct care.
Study context
- Population
- Patients with ventricular fibrillation sudden cardiac arrest (VF-SCA) out of hospitalVF-SCA patients, 1018 (56%) had refractory VF-SCA
- Participants
- 1,829 patients
- Exposure
- We compared two methods for recurrent versus incessant classification to understand their agreement and prognosis.
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Distribution of refractory VF-SCA subtypes
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
Favorable survival
- Favorable survival — test-for-trend
- p < 0.001
Agreement between classification methods (8-s snapshot for method 2)
- shock-specific kappa
- 0.97
- patient-level kappa
- 0.95
- Agreement was greatest using the 8-s snapshot for method 2
Original publication
Incessant versus recurrent refractory ventricular fibrillation: classification and prognosis in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Resuscitation. Published 5 March 2026. doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2026.111039
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it