SiOHCA: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Slovenia, 2022

Slovenia is a country with a long history of successfully registries, such as the Cancer Registry of the Republic of Slovenia. Registries are important for tracking quality assurance compared to other areas or countries, finding opportunities for improvement and identifying trends that are important for patients and their care. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a cardiac event defined as a sudden loss of cardiac mechanical contraction, with loss of signs of cardiac circulation, that occurs in an out-of-hospital setting and is associated with high mortality. Cardiac arrests can have different etiologies and can be broadly divided into cardiac arrests with non-cardiac and cardiac causes. Among the latter, acute myocardial infarctions (AMI) are numerically very predominant. In Slovenia, in 2012, there were 3376 cardiac events with AMI classification. Although the number of cardiovascular deaths has been declining in recent years, AMI is still one of the leading causes of death in Slovenia and, according to the average data of previous years, will be the cause of death for approximately 1,000 Slovenians in year 2022. Slovenia does do not yet have a registry of cardiac arrests like some other developed countries in Europe and worldwide, which makes it impossible to adequately process statistical data that would contribute to a higher quality of patient care. The purpose of the research was to find out how to better collect OHCA data in Slovenia. The goal was to create a database that complies with the Utstein 2015 protocol and can combine all data points that are already collected in Slovenia. The research collected data on out-of-hospital cardiac arrests according to two standards, that is EuReCa THREE and Utstein 2015. For the purpose of the research, the authors translated Utstein standard which was created based on the consensus of international experts (see among publications "Cardiac Arrest and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Outcome Reports: Update of the Utstein Resuscitation Registry Templates for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest" Perkins, Gavin D. et al., 2014) into Slovenian language, and added (for easier fulfilment) EuReCa THREE questions to the questionnaire. Three questionnaires are available in the accompanying materials, i.e.: "Register srčnih zastojev" (Register of Cardiac Arrests) corresponding to the data file (Utstein + EuReCa), "Sledenje srčnim zastojem" (Tracking Cardiac Arrests) covering Utstein standard (with the addition of EuReCa) and the original "EuReCa THREE" questionnaire. For correct understanding of the data, we suggest that you look at the following documents among the accompanying materials: "Navodila za anketarje" (Instructions for interviewers).