External validation of the Survival After ROSC in Cardiac Arrest (SARICA) score for predicting survival after return of spontaneous circulation using multinational pan-asian cohorts

Aim: Accurate and timely prognostication of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) who attain return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) is crucial in clinical decision-making, resource allocation, and communication with family. A clinical decision tool, Survival After ROSC in Cardiac Arrest (SARICA), was recently developed, showing excellent performance on internal validation. We aimed to externally validate SARICA in multinational cohorts within the Pan-Asian Resuscitation Outcomes Study. Materials and methods: This was an international, retrospective cohort study of patients who attained ROSC after OHCA in the Asia Pacific between January 2009 and August 2018. Pediatric (age <18 years) and traumatic arrests were excluded. The SARICA score was calculated for each patient. The primary outcome was survival. We used receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis to calculate the model performance of the SARICA score in predicting survival. A calibration belt plot was used to assess calibration. Results: Out of 207,450 cases of OHCA, 24,897 cases from Taiwan, Japan and South Korea were eligible for inclusion. Of this validation cohort, 30.4% survived. The median SARICA score was 4. Area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.759 (95% confidence interval, CI 0.753–0.766) for the total population. A higher AUC was observed in subgroups that received bystander CPR (AUC 0.791, 95% CI 0.782–0.801) and of presumed cardiac etiology (AUC 0.790, 95% CI 0.782–0.797). The model was well-calibrated. Conclusion: This external validation study of SARICA demonstrated high model performance in a multinational Pan-Asian cohort. Further modification and validation in other populations can be performed to assess its readiness for clinical translation.