Abstract
BACKGROUND: The gray-white-matter ratio (GWR) measured on brain computed tomography (CT) following return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) has been reported to be helpful in the prognostication of mortality or comatose status of cardiac arrest victims. However, whether the use of GWR in predicting the outcomes in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) survivors in Taiwan population remains uninvestigated. METHODS: This retrospective observational study conducted in a single tertiary medical center in Taiwan enrolled all the non-traumatic OHCA adults (> 18 years old) with sustained ROSC (≥ 20 minutes) during the period from 2006 to 2014. Patients with following exclusion criteria were further excluded: no brain CT within 24 hours following ROSC; the presence of intracranial hemorrhage, severe old insult, brain tumor, ventriculoperitoneal shunt, and severe image artifact. The GWR values were obtained from the density measurement of bilateral putamen, caudate nuclei, posterior limbs of internal capsule, corpus callosum, medial cortex and medial white matter of cerebrum in Hounsfield unit with region of interest of 0.11 cm(2), and further compared between the patients who survived to hospital discharge or not and the patients with and without good neurological outcome (good: cerebral performance category [CPC] of 1-2, poor: CPC of 3-5), respectively. RESULTS: A total of 228 patients were included in the final analysis with 59.2% in male gender and mean age of 65.8-year-old. There were 106 patients (46.5%) survived to hospital discharge and 40 patients (17.5%) discharged with good neurological outcomes. The GWR values of patients who survived to hospital discharge was significantly higher than ones of those who failed (e.g. basal ganglion: 1.239 vs. 1.199, p < 0.001). Patients with good neurological outcome also had higher GWR values than those with poor outcome (e.g. basal ganglion: 1.243 vs. 1.208, p = 0.010). The Area Under Curve of Receiver of Characteristic curve demonstrated fair predicting ability of GWR for survival and neurological outcomes. CONCLUSION: The use of GWR measured on bran CT within 24 hours following ROSC can help in predicting survival-to-hospital discharge and neurological outcome in OHCA survivors.