CAOCT

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a leading cause of sudden death in Europe and the United States. Mortality is currently close to 40% among those patients who had been successfully resuscitated after OHCA associated with ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia. Coronary artery disease is observed in up to 70% of patients with OHCA and immediate coronary angiography. Current European and American guidelines recommend immediate coronary angiography with primary angioplasty in OHCA patients with ST-segment elevation on ECG after successful resuscitation. Furthermore, the identification of the culprit lesion by coronary angiography among patients with an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and no OHCA is challenging. 

In a recent cardiac magnetic resonance study, Heitner et al. found that in almost half of the patients with non-ST segment elevation ACS, the culprit lesion was not properly detected or identified by coronary angiography. 

In the Coronary Angiography after cardiac arrest (COACT) trial, a randomized controlled trial comparing immediate versus delayed coronary angiography after OHCA in patients without ST segment elevation on ECG, some degree of coronary artery disease was found in 64.5% of the patients in the immediate angiography group and an unstable coronary lesion was identified in only 13.6% of the patients. However, in survivors of OHCA without ST segment elevation on ECG, the use of intra coronary optical computerized tomography (OCT) led to identification of plaque rupture (27%), plaque erosion (36%) and coronary thrombosis (59%) undetected on angiography. There is hence a clear need to improve causality diagnosis among patients resuscitated after OHCA and without ST segment elevation on ECG, and, in the case of coronary artery disease detection, to better identify the culprit vessel/lesion ultimately leading to a targeted treatment. These are the reasons why we have designed a prospective, multi-centre, single cohort, diagnostic accuracy study: to better explore the incidence of a true ACS among OHCA survivors and to evaluate the accuracy of angiography to detect the culprit lesion when compared to OCT.

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT04431661