Optimizing cardiac resuscitation outcomes using wavelet analysis

Ventricular fibrillation (VF) is the most lethal of cardiac arrhythmias that leads to sudden cardiac death if untreated within minutes of its occurrence. Defibrillation using electric shock resets the heart to return to spontaneous circulation (ROSC) state, however the success of which depends on various factors such as the viability of myocardium and the time lag between the onset of VF to defibrillation. Recent studies have reported that performing cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) procedure prior to applying shock increases the survival rate especially when VF is untreated for more than 5 minutes. Considering the limited time within which the VF has to be treated for better survival rates, the choice of the right therapy (shock parameters, shock first or CPR first, drug administration) is vital. In aiding this choice, it would be of immense help for emergency medical staff (EMS) if an objective feedback could be provided at near real-time rate on the VF characteristics and its relation to the shock outcomes. Existing works in the literature have demonstrated correlation between the characteristics of the VF waveform and the outcome (ROSC) of the defibrillation. The proposed work improves on this by attempting to arrive at a near real-time monitoring tool in aiding the EMS staff. Using data collected from 16 pigs during VF, the proposed wavelet methodology achieved an overall accuracy of 94% in successfully predicting the shock outcomes.