[Cardiorespiratory arrest as a reason for admission to the ICU: clinical course and prognostic factors].

The cardiac arrest is a situation associated with a abrupt and unexpected interruption of the spontaneous breath and circulation. It's a frequent cause to admit people in hospital. There the patients are admitted to the intensive care unit in order to care for them after cardiac arrest. We have studied 68 cases about cardiac arrest, their evolution, death rate and many factors usually described by another authors as prognostic of these patients. We encountered a higher mortality the longer the time of arrest, the higher the score on the Apache scale, on the lower the score on the Glasgow coma scale. Another point is if we aren't sure about the cause of the cardiac arrest or it's cerebrovascular accidents or upper airway failure, the prognostic is worse. Finally, if the ECG at the moment of the admission is asystole the death rate is 100%.