Medicine (Jun 2022)

Adult influenza epidemic is associated with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

  • Yasunori Suematsu, MD, PhD,
  • Takashi Kuwano, MD, PhD,
  • Motoki Yamashita, MD, PhD,
  • Hiroyuki Tsutsui, MD, PhD,
  • Naoki Sato, MD, PhD,
  • Takanori Ikeda, MD, PhD,
  • Ken Nagao, MD, PhD,
  • Naohiro Yonemoto, MPH, PhD,
  • Yoshio Tahara, MD, PhD,
  • Keijiro Saku, MD, PhD,
  • Shin-ichiro Miura, MD, PhD,
  • on behalf of the Japanese Circulation Society with Resuscitation Science Study (JCS-ReSS) Group

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1097/MD.0000000000029535
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 101, no. 24
p. e29535

Abstract

Read online

Abstract. It has been reported that influenza infection is associated with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest of cardiac origin (OHCA-CA). However, the association between OHCA-CA and influenza epidemics in adults has not been well investigated. We analyzed data from the All-Japan Utstein Registry, a prospective, nationwide, population-based, observational study, regarding OHCA-CA cases and the Infectious Diseases Weekly Report for influenza cases: 17,710 OHCA-CA cases and 764,808 influenza cases were recorded between 2005 and 2015 in Fukuoka, Japan. The weekly average number of OHCA-CA cases was positively associated with the number of patients with influenza infection (r = 0.70, P < .0001). To eliminate the effects of season and age, we investigated only adults in winter. The weekly number of OHCA-CA cases was positively associated with the number of patients with influenza infection in weeks when there was a high frequency of influenza infection in adults (r = 0.36, P = .006), but not in weeks with a medium (r = 0.26, P = .05) or low frequency of influenza infection (r = 0.003, P = 1.0). In weeks during which there was a high frequency of influenza infection, the weekly number of OHCA-CA cases was positively associated with the number of influenza infections in males (r = 0.37, P = .006), but not females (r = 0.18, P = .2). The number of OHCA-CA cases was positively associated with the number of influenza infections in adult males during weeks in which there was a high frequency of influenza infections. To help prevent OHCA-CA in males, it might be beneficial to announce influenza epidemics specifically in adults, in addition to all ages.