Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest at Home in Japan

Although majority of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCAs) occur in private residential locations, that is, at home, the details of emergency patients with OHCAs occurring at home have not been sufficiently investigated at the national level. We obtained data of OHCA cases from the All-Japan Utstein Registry, including detailed information of the location of cardiac arrest. Cases of OHCA occurring at home from 2013 to 2015 were included. Patient characteristics and outcomes after OHCA were described based on the location of cardiac arrest. During the 3-year study period, a total of 212,722 cases of OHCA were documented at home (186,219 in detached houses and 26,503 in multiple dwelling houses), and it accounted for 65.0% of all OHCA cases in Japan. The majority of OHCAs occurred in the living room/bedroom (67.7%), followed by the bathroom (12.9%), entrance/corridor (5.3%), and toilet (4.8%). The characteristics of OHCA at home, widely varied by location of cardiac arrest and residence type. The proportion of bystander-initiated cardiopulmonary resuscitations was less than half at all locations and ranged from 27.9% to 47.1%. The proportion of public-access defibrillation was also low regardless of the location of arrest and ranged from 0.0% to 0.2%. Consequently, the proportion of 1-month survival with favorable neurological outcome was low regardless of the location of arrest and ranged from 0.3% to 2.3%. In conclusion, OHCA occurrence at home accounted for approximately 2/3 of all OHCA cases in Japan, but their outcomes were extremely poor regardless of the location of cardiac arrest.