Nadkarni VM, Larkin GL, Peberdy MA, et al. First documented rhythm and clinical outcome from in-hospital cardiac arrest among children and adults. JAMA. 2006; 295:50-57.

Survival is better for children who experience in-hospital cardiac arrest than for adults, according to this article. The article also suggests that CPR approaches for the two age groups should be more similar than different. Previous reports have shown that cardiac arrests due to ventricular fibrillation (VF) or pulseless ventricular tachycardia (VT) have better outcomes than those due to asystole or pulseless electrical activity. Because the former types were thought to be less common in children than in adults, it was hypothesized that survival would be worse in children. The authors found that cardiac arrest due to VF or VT is more common in children than previously thought. However, these types of arrests were still less common in children than adults. Even though these better-prognosis arrests were less common in children, they still had improved survival compared with adults. In both age groups, asystole and pulse-less electrical activity-type arrests are the most common, and children fare better after these types than adults. The researchers evaluated nearly 37,000 cardiac arrests that occurred at 253 U.S. and Canadian hospitals between January 1, 2000 and March 30, 2004. About 900 of the arrests logged in this data set, the National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, involved children, the rest involved adults. Overall, 27% of children survived to hospital discharge compared with 18% of adults, yielding an adjusted odds ratio of 2.29. Of the survivors, the percentage of children and adults with a good neurologic outcome was 65% and 73% respectively.