Saket Girotra, MBBS, assistant professor of internal medicine and an interventional cardiologist in the Division of Cardiovascular Disease, is recognized as a national leader in outcomes research related to both in-hospital and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. In the past year, he was the lead author of a study published in the prestigious journal Circulation titled, “Regional Variation in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Survival in the United States” (April 14, 2016), which examined variation in cardiac arrest outcomes for out-of-hospital events.
The study examined data from the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES) for nearly 100,000 patients in 132 counties across the United States. Rates of survival to discharge and rates of survival with functional recovery have been known to vary widely. Analysis of study data found that a substantial proportion of the variation was due to differences in bystander response across communities.
In addition, Girotra was one of the authors of a separate study published last year in Circulation titled, “Hospital Variation in Time to Epinephrine for Non-Shockable In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest,” (Dec. 1, 2016). That study analyzed the extent of hospital variation in delayed epinephrine administration and its impact on hospital-level outcomes for adult patients with in-hospital cardiac arrest due to a non-shockable rhythm. Analysis concluded that hospitals with high rates of delayed epinephrine administration had lower rates of overall survival for in-hospital cardiac arrest due to non-shockable rhythm. Further studies are needed to determine if improving hospital performance on this metric will lead to improved outcomes in this patient population.
A prolific scientist and author, Girotra will begin another study using data from the GWTG-Resuscitation Registry in the coming year.