Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) occurs when the heart stops beating unexpectedly and is a leading cause of death in developed countries. Many causes of cardiac arrest are treatable, however cannot be fixed unless blood is being pumped to vital organs while the problem is addressed. Heart-lung bypass machines have been used for many years to keep people alive while their heart is purposefully stopped during open-heart surgery. Heart-lung bypass machines take over the role of the heart and lungs by mixing oxygen into patient's blood and then pumping it around their body. Recently, heart-lung bypass machines have been used on patients with OHCA in an attempt to keep them alive while the underlying cause is fixed. This has been called "extracorporeal CPR" or "ECPR". Although promising results have been reported, we are still uncertain about whether this treatment saves lives. ECPR is a very difficult and expensive treatment. It is important to carefully plan ECPR research before using it as standard therapy. In May 2016, an international group of researchers, doctors, nurses, paramedics and policy makers from different specialty areas met and formed the Canadian ECPR Research Network to begin this work. We realized during this meeting that we have a unique opportunity in Canada to conduct high-quality research on ECPR. We agreed that this research would require teamwork across the country and very careful planning to be successful. In this application, we propose a two-day planning meeting to bring together this newly formed research network, attract the additional experts needed for this research and plan the best methods to determine if ECPR should become the standard of care. At the end of the meeting, we intend to have a clear action plan for research around ECPR. Our action plan will aim to determine the effectiveness of ECPR while also understanding the logistical, economic and ethical issues that are central to the problem.