| Summary: | No abstract available. Article truncated at 150 words. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is an uncommon, but important, condition encountered in the emergency department (ED). While cardiac arrest represents the final common pathway of multiple conditions, early evaluation often focuses on cardiac abnormalities. However, observed associations between infection, particularly pneumonia, and in-hospital cardiac arrest led Coba et al. (1) to investigate the incidence of bacteremia among OHCA patients. The study prospectively investigated 250 adult patients who presented to an academic ED with OHCA between 2007 and 2009. Two blood culture samples were drawn during resuscitation or shortly after return of spontaneous circulation through vascular devices placed for clinical purposes. Children, pregnant women, victims of trauma were excluded. To minimize false positive results, patients were classified as bacteremic if one sample was positive for a typical pathogen or both samples were positive for the same skin colonizing organism. Patients in whom only 1 sample was positive for suspected skin contaminant ...
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