Abstract 18877: An Accurate Method for Automated Rhythm Classification During CPR

Introduction: Accurate identification of the cardiac rhythm during CPR could facilitate appropriate defibrillation and guide medication treatments without interrupting chest compressions for rhythm analysis. Hypothesis: A rhythm classification method which “reads-through” CPR artifact would identify shockable rhythms with high sensitivity and non-shockable rhythms with high specificity during CPR. Methods: Two physicians annotated rhythms as shockable (VF or other shockable), non-shockable (asystole or organized) or indeterminate, throughout defibrillator recordings from a convenience sample of 185 treated OHCA cases. CPR was determined from impedance and/or accelerometer signals. Each ECG tracing was divided into consecutive 4-second frames, and only frames during CPR were included. The “read-through” method was derived from a development set (N=95 cases) and uses features generated by cross-correlation with a series of QRS-like wavelets and a hidden Markov model to integrate sequential data. In the vali...