Cardiopulmonary resuscitation in obese patients: A scoping review

Given the increasing global prevalence of obesity, the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) commissioned this scoping review to explore current evidence underpinning treatment and outcomes of obese patients (adult and children) in cardiac arrest.

This scoping review, conducted using Arksey and O'Malley's framework and reported according to PRISMA-ScR guidelines, included studies of CPR in obese patients. 'Obese' was defined according to each individual study. Medline, EMBASE and Cochrane were searched from inception to 1 October 2024. Narrative synthesis was guided by Synthesis Without Meta-Analysis (SWiM) reporting guidelines.

36 studies were included: 2 paediatric and 34 adult studies. Fourteen studies reported on out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), 12 on in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA), eight on both OHCA and IHCA: cardiac arrest location was not reported in two studies. The most common outcomes were survival (n = 29), neurological outcome (n = 17) and ROSC (n = 7). In adults there were variable results in neurological outcome, survival to hospital discharge, longer term survival (months to years), and ROSC. In children, there were two studies suggesting that obese children had worse neurological outcomes, lower survival and lower ROSC than normal weight children. Few studies reported resuscitation quality indicators or techniques, and no studies reported adjustments to CPR techniques.

The variability in results does not suggest an urgent need to deviate from standard CPR protocols, however there was some evidence that CPR duration may be longer in obese adults, which may have staffing and resource implications.