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Cardiac arrest
Two-thirds of ECPR survivors alive at five years
Long-Term Survival Following Extracorporeal Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: A Two-Center Five-Year Analysis
Resuscitation · 2026-11 · Added 4 November 2026
A US–Czech retrospective cohort of 728 patients given ECPR for refractory VT/VF OHCA found 29% survived to hospital discharge and, among those survivors, about two-thirds were still alive at five years with favourable cerebral performance in most.
- Study type
- Cohort
- Design
- Retrospective two-centre cohort (Minnesota, USA and Prague, Czechia)
- Participants
- 728 ECPR patients, 211 discharged alive
- Main finding
- 211/728 (29.0%) survived to discharge; 76.9% and 67.2% of hospital survivors were alive at 1 and 5 years; CPC 1–2 in 78.7% at discharge and above 93% among survivors beyond 1 year; five-year survival ranged from 91.6% (18–39 years) to 52.9% (>70 years)
- Caveat
- Highly selected patients within established ECPR systems, no control group, and most deaths clustered in the first 90 days after discharge
- Bottom line
- Context only
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). ECPR-capable centres are scarce in Australia, so this informs destination decisions and which refractory arrests are worth a fast transport rather than anything crews do on scene.
Learning goal
Weigh the role of ECPR eligibility criteria in improving long-term outcomes for patients in refractory out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
More
- Topic: Cardiac arrest
- Daily scan: 4 November 2026
- Podcast: Paramedic Papers Daily, 4 November 2026
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