Unexpected cardiac arrest during anesthesia and surgery. An environmental study

Abstract

Medical and legal records of 41 cases of cardiac arrest that occurred during surgery were supplied by a professional liability insurance company and a review was undertaken in an attempt to identify recurring or common factors. The majority of patients were healthy and required relatively routine elective surgical procedures. Only 3 of the patients survived the cardiac arrest and returned to normal activities. The remaining patients either died in the hospital or had a major CNS deficit. Hypoxia from hypoventilation and low levels of inspired O2 appeared to be the chief cause of cardiac arrest. Because of the unknown frequency of cardiac arrest during surgery, the establishment of a national registry of cardiac arrest cases that occur in surgical patients is recommended to monitor incidence, causes and outcome.