1 | INTRODUCTION
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is the most important interventional
procedure which contributes to the survival of patients with cardiac
arrest (CA) and consists of basic and advanced life
supports.1 Despite major advances in CPR and
post-resuscitation care, patients surviving out of hospital cardiac
arrest (OHCA) still carry poor prognosis including increased risk of
mortality and morbidity.2,3 The whole-body ischemia
during CA leads to systemic inflammatory response damage and reperfusion
of this tissue triggers even more tissue injury which is defined as
ischemia-reperfusion injury.4 Therefore, it is
important to evaluate the prognosis after CPR in patients who survived
from CA.
Systemic inflammation can be evaluated with many laboratory markers. One
of these markers is neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) which reflect
the balance between neutrophils and lymphocytes.5 NLR
play a crucial role in the ischemia-reperfusion injury. It has been
demonstrated that higher NLR is associated with mortality in patients
with OHCA.6 Nevertheless, C-reactive protein (CRP) to
albumin ratio (CAR) is also a novel marker of systemic inflammation. It
reflects the balance between CRP and albumin and detected to be more
sensitive than CRP and albumin separately to evaluate the intense of
inflammatory response.7 The clinical importance of CAR
has been demonstrated in different patient
population.8-10
Although previous studies investigated the association of NLR with
prognosis in patients with OHCA, to our knowledge, there is no study
evaluating the clinical importance of CAR in these patients. The aim of
our study is to assess the effect of CAR on mortality in patients with
OHCA.