Annals of Intensive Care volume 12 , Article number: Cite this article. Metrics details. The literature is unresolved on whether female receive advanced cardiac life support less than do male and on whether female have a survival advantage over male after cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
We systematically searched PubMed, Embase and Web of Science databases from inception to April for papers reporting outcomes in adult male and female after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
The main study outcome was the rate of adjusted survival to hospital discharge or 30 days. Secondary outcomes included unadjusted survival to hospital discharge and favourable neurological outcome. A total of 28 studies were included, involving 1,, patients. Female were older than male, their cardiac arrests were less likely to be witnessed and less likely to present with a shockable rhythm. Unadjusted analysis showed that females had a lower likelihood of survival than males OR 0. Data showed that male had a significantly higher likelihood of favorable neurological outcome in unadjusted analysis but this trend disappeared after adjustment.
Both the primary outcome adjusted for several variables and the secondary outcomes were associated with substantial heterogeneity. The variables examined using meta-regression, subgroup and sensitivity analyses i. The validity of this finding is limited by substantial heterogeneity despite in-depth investigation of its causes, which raises concerns regarding latent inequalities in some reports nonetheless. Further study on this topic may require inclusion of factors not reported in the Utstein template and in-depth analysis of decision-making processes.
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest OHCA , occurs at an incidence of The characteristics of OHCA differ in male and female [ 12 ]. Female are usually older [ 13 ] and have more co-morbidities e. Female arrest in the privacy of their own home and resultantly their arrests tend to be less witnessed [ 17 ].
