The impact of prehospital assessment and EMS transport of acute aortic syndrome patients.

BACKGROUND

The quality of acute aortic syndrome (AAS) assessment by emergency medical service (EMS) and the incidence and prehospital factors associated with 1-month survival remain unclear.

METHODS

We retrospectively analyzed the data collected for 94,468 patients with non-traumatic medical emergency excluding out-of-hospital cardiac arrest during the period of 2011-2014.

RESULTS

Of these transported by EMS, 22,075 had any of the AAS-related symptoms, and 330 had an EMS-assessed risk for AAS; of these, 195 received an in-hospital AAS diagnosis. Of the remaining 21,745 patients without EMS-assessed risk, 166 were diagnosed with AAS. Therefore, the sensitivity and specificity of our EMS-risk assessment for AAS was 54.0% (195/361) and 99.4% (21,579/21,714), respectively. EMS assessed the risk less frequently when patients were elderly and presented with dyspnea and syncope/faintness. Sign of upper extremity ischemia was rarely detected (6.9%) and absence of this sign was associated with lack of EMS-assessed risk. The calculation of modified aortic dissection detection risk score revealed that rigorous assessment based on this score may increase the EMS sensitivity for AAS. The 1-month survival rate was significantly higher in patients admitted to core hospitals with surgical teams for AAS than in those admitted to all other hospitals [87.5% (210/240) vs 69.4% (84/121); P<0.01]. Multiple logistic regression analysis demonstrated that Stanford type A, Glasgow coma scale ≤14, and admission to core hospitals providing emergency cardiovascular surgery were associated with 1-month survival.

CONCLUSIONS

Improvement of AAS survival is likely to be affected by rapid admission to appropriate hospitals providing cardiovascular surgery.