Work-up and management of sudden cardiac death survivors

Management of patients resuscitated from an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest can be divided into three phases: (1) the in-hospital phase primarily deals with treatment of the cardiac, pulmonary, and neurologic complications of the resuscitation; (2) the second phase consists of diagnostic studies to identify any underlying cardiac pathology or predisposing factors and to characterize the nature of the patient's arrhythmia; and (3) in the final phase, these data are used to guide the appropriate choice of therapy.