Cardiac Arrest PSP Question Verification Form

The purpose of this Question Verification Form is to enable Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs) to describe clearly how they checked that their questions were unanswered, before starting the interim prioritisation stage of the process.

The JLA requires PSPs to be transparent and accountable in defining their own scope and evidence checking process. This will enable researchers and other stakeholders to understand how individual PSPs decided that their questions were unanswered, and any limitations of their evidence checking.

Name of the PSP

Cardiac Arrest-Setting Priorities for Research Partnership (CA-SPR)

Please describe the scope of the PSP

The aim of CA-SPR is to work with survivors, family members, lay rescuers, and health care providers to identify unanswered research questions, emerging issues, and priorities for research regarding the care of adult survivors of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), including treatment uncertainties, rehabilitation, and survivorship.

Please provide a brief overview of your approach to checking whether the questions were unanswered

The steering committee for our PSP includes individuals who have been involved in conducting some of the seminal research studies and trials related to SCA, as well as serving on international scientific task forces and contributing to national and international clinical practice guidelines related to SCA. As such, they have expert level knowledge of much of the scientific literature related to the scope of this PSP (including systematic and scoping reviews, current and previous trials, and grey literature). Furthermore, they are aware that in the case of SCA, there are some questions which have a significant amount of scientific evidence available. Accordingly, we consulted with a librarian on how to deal with searching for the 77 indicative questions identified from analysis of the first survey and each of them was translated and the search strategy was created. The librarian provided a comprehensive search strategy process with a focus on systematic reviews.

Please list the type(s) of evidence you used to verify your questions as unanswered

Systematic reviews and large randomized controlled trials.

Please list the sources that you searched in order to identify that evidence

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
Pubmed
Embase
Psych Info
Google Scholar
Clinical Trials.gov

What search terms did you use?

Patient care, caregivers, family, cardiac arrest, heart arrest, quality of life, professional-family relations, patient discharge, health education, cost of illness, survivorship, risk factors, uncertainty, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, defibrillators, rehabilitation, after care, intubation, airway management, ventilation, circadian clocks, death (sudden, cardiac), patient care team, hospital rapid response team, treatment outcome, hospital rapid response team, signs and symptoms, social media, bystander effect, paediatrics, motivation, education, drug administration routes, clinical protocols, drone.

Please describe the parameters of the search (eg time limits, excluded sources, country/language) and the rationale for any limitations

>2016 (although older results were included)
English language (or at least English language abstract)

Names of individuals who undertook the evidence checking

Iveta Lewis, MIS, MLCE
Medical Librarian
North York General Hospital, Toronto, ON. Canada

On what date was the question verification process completed?

July 19th – July 31st, 2019

Any other relevant information

The questions included 77 specific inquiries on cardiac arrest, CPR and patients, family and caregiver survivorships, outcomes, training, and impact on their daily lives. The Librarian was searching for systematic review, of which none of the relevant were found on the subjects searched for. The majority of the results included randomized controlled trials. For 10 of the questions, while there was no definitive systematic review, the Steering Committee agreed that there was sufficient high quality evidence (large randomized trials) for the cardiac arrest community to consider those questions answered. Therefore, 67 questions were included in the second survey.