Long term survival and disease burden from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Singapore: a population-based cohort studyResearch in context

Summary: Background: Understanding the long-term outcomes and disability-adjusted life years (DALY) after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is important to understand the overall health and disease burden of OHCA respectively, but data in Asia remains limited. We aimed to quantify long-term survival and the annual disease burden of OHCA within a national multi-ethnic Asian cohort. Methods: We conducted an open cohort study linking the Singapore Pan-Asian Resuscitation Outcomes Study (PAROS) and the Singapore Registry of Births and Deaths from 2010 to 2019. We performed Cox regression, constructed Kaplan–Meier curves, and calculated DALYs and standardised mortality ratios (SMR) for each year of follow-up. Results: We analysed 802 cases. The mean age was 56.0 (SD 17.8). Most were male (631 cases, 78,7%) and of Chinese ethnicity (552 cases, 68.8%). At one year, the SMR was 14.9 (95% CI:12.5–17.8), decreasing to 1.2 (95% CI:0.7–1.8) at three years, and 0.4 (95% CI:0.2–0.8) at five years. Age at arrest (HR:1.03, 95% CI:1.02–1.04, p