The University of Pittsburgh Schools of Health Sciences is building a database of electrocardiogram (ECG) information that aims to help better guide real-time decision making during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for cardiac arrest.
University of Pittsburgh received a $1.8 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health, to create the database. It will be the largest repository of its kind, taking data from 10,000 ECG reports collected by the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (ROC). ROC is a clinical research network funded by the NHLBI. Already, the research team has created a data management and analytic platform which converts ECG data into a uniform format. This will allow them to analyze the data.
“We will make use of this information to better understand how the quality of CPR might change the ECG patterns, and then link that to the outcomes of the patient all the way to discharge. If we can see what works best, we can further refine CPR interventions and save more lives,” stated James Menegazzi, Ph.D., professor of resuscitation research in the Department of Emergency Medicine a the the University of Pittsburgh.
