RESEARCH ARTICLE The Secular Trends in the Incidence Rate and Outcomes of Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest in Taiwan—A Nationwide Population-Based Study

Objective This study investigated the trends in incidence and mortality of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), as well as factors associated with OHCA outcomes in Taiwan. Methods Our study included OHCA patients requiring cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) upon ar-rival at the hospital. We used national time-series data on annual OHCA incidence rates and mortality rates from 2000 to 2012, and individual demographic and clinical data for all OHCA patients requiring mechanical ventilation (MV) care from March of 2010 to Septem-ber of 2011. Analytic techniques included the time-series regression and the logistic regression. Results There were 117,787 OHCAs in total. The overall incidence rate during the 13 years was 51.1 per 100,000 persons, and the secular trend indicates a sharp increase in the early 2000s and a decrease afterwards. The trend in mortality was also curvilinear, revealing