Establishment of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest registry in Penang, Malaysia.
Only 7.1% of resuscitated cardiac arrests had an AED applied by bystanders
Establishment of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest registry in Penang, Malaysia.
In Penang, Malaysia, an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (out-of-hospital cardiac arrest) registry was established in 2023 to facilitate systematic, sustainable collection and analysis of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases across the state.
This paper describes the development of key data collection processes and presents a descriptive analysis of data captured during the first year of establishment.
An online platform (myOHCA2.0) was developed to abstract data from existing pre-hospital and in-hospital electronic systems, capturing patient, event, response, and outcome characteristics in accordance with the Utstein template.
Patients were predominantly male (54.8%) with a median age of 73 years [IQR 61-83].
In total, 16.3% had a resuscitation attempt by EMS.
The median ambulance response time was 21 min [IQR 16-29].
Return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) was achieved in 10.3% of this cohort, while 30-day survival was 1.3%.
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates in Penang remain low despite bystander CPR being performed in nearly half of EMS-attempted resuscitation cases.
Prolonged EMS response times and low rates of AED deployment represent targets for intervention.