Spontaneous subarachnoid haemorrhage as a cause of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

OBJECTIVE

Spontaneous subarachnoid haemorrhage as a cause of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is poorly evaluated. We analyse disease-specific and emergency care data in order to improve the recognition of subarachnoid haemorrhage as a cause of cardiac arrest.

DESIGN

We searched a registry of cardiac arrest patients admitted after primarily successful resuscitation to an emergency department retrospectively and analysed the records of subarachnoid haemorrhage patients for predictive features.

RESULTS

Over 8.5 years, spontaneous subarachnoidal haemorrhage was identified as the immediate cause in 27 (4%) of 765 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. Of these 27 patients, 24 (89%) presented with at least three or more of the following common features: female gender (63%), age under 40 years (44%), lack of co-morbidity (70%), headache prior to cardiac arrest (39%), asystole or pulseless electric activity as the initial cardiac rhythm (93%), and no recovery of brain stem reflexes (89%). In six patients (22%), an intraventricular drain was placed, one of them (4%) survived to hospital discharge with a favourable outcome.

CONCLUSIONS

Subarachnoid haemorrhage complicated by cardiac arrest is almost always fatal even when a spontaneous circulation can be restored initially. This is due to the severity of brain damage. Subarachnoid haemorrhage may present in young patients without any previous medical history with cardiac arrest masking the diagnosis initially.