The prognostic value of cardiac ultrasonography in patients with cardiac arrest

Echocardiography or cardiac imaging is proposed as a gold standard method for identifying high risk patients for cardiac arrest. In this systematic review, we studied the prognostic value of cardiac sonography in patients with cardiac arrest.
PubMed was searched for the relevant articles. Case reports were not included. Inclusion criteria were all the studies applied transthorasic echocardiography in patients with cardiac arrest arrived at emergency department that studied the efficacy of this modality on patients survived to emergency discharge and returned to spontaneous circulation.
Overall, 870 articles were obtained through initial search and only nine articles were included after the evaluation of the title, abstract, and the full text. Echocardiography has high sensitivity and specificity in predicting the return of spontaneous circulation.
Cardiac sonography is a fairly effective (not definitive) modality in predicting death in patients with lack of cardiac activity during resuscitation. Echocardiography should not be the sole basis for the decision to cease resuscitative efforts.