The Influence of Female Gender on Cardiac Arrest Outcomes: a Systematic Review of the Literature

Background: Sudden cardiac arrest is an important cause of cardiovascular mortality. The impact of gender on the outcome of cardiac arrest is not clear and data about that is limited.

Objective: Understanding the influence of gender on cardiac arrest through a systematic review of the published literature.

Methods: A search of all published studies in English between January 1970 and May 2013 was performed using the electronic databases PubMed and MEDLINE, using the key words 'cardiac arrest', 'outcome', and 'gender'.

Results: Eleven studies were included in this review, all of which were observational studies conducted using national-based database registries of cardiac arrest. A total of 548,440 patients were enrolled in these studies with 220,646 (40.3%) of them being female patients. In general, there was a lower percentage of women in the reported studies compared to men. Women were older in age and more likely to have non-shockable rhythms as the initial rhythm. Women also had a lower rate of witnessed arrest, a lower rate of bystander resuscitation, a higher rate of survival until hospital admission and a lower rate of in-hospital survival compared to men. Women also had a more favorable one month survival and neurological outcome.

Conclusion: In the reported literature female gender seems to offer survival and outcome advantages following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest over male gender. This is in contrast to most other aspects of heart disease in which women tend to have a worse prognosis.