Association of Postarrest Hypotension Burden With Unfavorable Neurologic Outcome After Pediatric Cardiac Arrest

Raymond Liu1, Tanmay Majumdar2, Monique M Gardner1,3

  • 1Department of Pediatrics, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

PubMed

Insights

Hypotension burden, duration, and magnitude after pediatric cardiac arrest are linked to poor neurologic outcomes. Continuous arterial blood pressure monitoring helps quantify this risk in children.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Critical Care Medicine
  • Cardiovascular Physiology
  • Neurology

Background:

  • Pediatric cardiac arrest (CA) survivors often experience neurological deficits.
  • Quantifying hemodynamic instability, specifically hypotension, is crucial for predicting outcomes.
  • Continuous arterial blood pressure (ABP) monitoring offers detailed hemodynamic insights.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To quantify the burden of hypotension using high-resolution continuous ABP data in pediatric CA patients.
  • To determine the association between hypotension burden and neurologic outcomes post-CA.

Main Methods:

  • Retrospective observational study in an academic pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).
  • Included children (≤18 years) with CA requiring invasive ABP monitoring.
  • Hypotension burden calculated as the time-normalized integral of mean arterial pressure (MAP) below age-specific percentiles.

Main Results:

  • 63% of 140 pediatric CA patients had unfavorable neurologic outcomes.
  • Higher hypotension burden, duration, and magnitude were observed in patients with unfavorable outcomes (p < 0.001).
  • Increased hypotension burden below the 5th percentile MAP was associated with significantly higher odds of unfavorable outcomes (aOR 14.8, p=0.040).

Conclusions:

  • High-resolution continuous ABP monitoring effectively quantifies hypotension burden in pediatric CA.
  • Hypotension burden, duration, and magnitude are significantly associated with unfavorable neurologic outcomes.
  • These findings highlight the importance of managing hypotension in pediatric CA survivors.
Abstract

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