Biochemical Makers for Outcome Prognostication After Pediatric out-of Hospital Cardiac Arrest: Observational Cohort Trial

Cardiac arrest (CA) is an important cause of mortality and morbidity in pediatric patients. Yearly incidence of CA is 7- 8 cases per 100000 children. Hypoxia is the leading cause of OHCA with up to 1/3 being of respiratory origin, and drowning in ¼ of cases. Up to 2/3 of children admitted to hospitals after OHCA die, with only 16,2% survivors with good neurological outcome. Pediatric cerebral performance category (pCPC) 5, which means persistent coma with patent brainstem reflexes or president vegetative state, or pCPC 6 -brain death is considered a bad outcome in pediatric OHCA survivors.

Early prediction of poor outcome is desirable to avoid futile care and to guide the communication with the relatives of the patient.

There is no published recommendation for the prognostication of outcome of comatose pediatric cardiac arrest survivors. The recommendations for adult patients contains the use of neuron-specific enolase (NSE) and protein S-100B in combination with further predictors in prognosticating the outcome of CA. The remaining problem is to determine a cut-off value, to predict poor outcome (CPC category 5 and 6) with 100% specificity. For this reason, the cut-off values are not included in the recommendations.

Neuron-specific enolase is a glycolytic enzyme localized primarily in the cytoplasma of the neurons. The protein S-100B is a calcium-binding protein specific for the astroglia. Both are sensitive and specific markers for neuronal, respectively astroglial cell death. According to data available in the adult population, serum concentration of NSE and S100B are sensitive and specific markers of traumatic brain injury. High concentration of NSE 3 days after cardiac arrest is a strong predictor of poor outcome. Data regarding the prognostic value of neuronal biomarkers in comatose pediatric CA survivors are scarce.

The aim of the pilot study is to determine the association of the concentration of neuronal biomarkers and the outcome of pediatric CA survivors admitted to the pediatric ICU of the University Hospital Brno. The association will be evaluated individually and in combination with clinical and imaging variables. The basic hypothesis is, that the biochemical, clinical and imaging markers of neurological injury are able to prognosticate poor outcome (pCPC 5-6) with high sensitivity and specificity. The innovation of the study will be the evaluation of the dynamics of serum biomarkers early after CA (first 48 hours).