# Drug overdose out-of-hospital cardiac arrest events in the United States: Insights from a large data registry

> **NIH NIH R21** · BAYSTATE MEDICAL CENTER, INC. · 2022 · $111,000

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Drug overdose out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OD-OHCA) is a serious and growing public health threat that is
wholly understudied. Currently, we lack a broadly-representative, contemporary clinical profile of OD-OHCA
across America and we do not know the relative societal disease burden of OD-OHCA. In addition, we do not
have a direct comparison of OD-OHCA and presumed cardiac etiology (C-OHCA) controls statistically
matched by age and other key clinical factors. Further, the optimal post-resuscitation treatment for OD-OHCA
event survivors is unknown. Our research will address these knowledge gaps. Our central hypothesis is that
there will be a substantial public health impact from OD-OHCA relative to other high-burden diseases,
statistically significant and clinically important differences between OD-OHCA and propensity-matched C-
OHCA outcomes, and potential therapeutic benefit to provision of targeted temperature mangement (TTM)
during post-resuscitation critical care. The scientific premise for this work is that we currently do not
adequately understand the full scope of OD-OHCA in America, and the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance
Survival (CARES) dataset is the largest collection of homogeneous, contemporary data on this cohort for
analysis to fill these important knowledge gaps and accelerate the pace of drug abuse research in this area.
From CARES, we will create a broadly-representative, contemporary clinical profile of OD-OHCA across
America, estimate the public health impact of OD-OHCA as measured by disability-adjusted life years lost
(DALY [inclusive of mortality and morbidity]), compare OD-OHCA patient outcomes to propensity-match
controls with C-OHCA, and determine the effect of post-resuscitation TTM on patient outcomes as measured
by hospital discharge Cerebral Performance Category (CPC) scale scores. This research is significant
because currently little is known about substance use disorder from the perspective of OD-OHCA in this
rapidly growing segment of society, and our findings can be translated directly into clinical care protocols and
will potentially modify care guidelines to save lives. Our work is innovative in that we will be accessing an
enormous, broadly-representative repository of prospectively collected and validated data from throughout
the country. Further, the highly capable research team has members with priority access to the actively
expanding CARES dataset for this analysis, collaborators with considerable expertise in OHCA as well as
vast experience in predictive modeling using large datasets. This work will help enable high-quality research
to advance scientific knowledge on this potential consequence of addiction and drug use to directly improve
patient care for this stigmatized, vulnerable population.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10336448
- **Project number:** 5R21HL156198-02
- **Recipient organization:** BAYSTATE MEDICAL CENTER, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Timothy J MADER
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $111,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-02-01 → 2023-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10336448

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10336448, Drug overdose out-of-hospital cardiac arrest events in the United States: Insights from a large data registry (5R21HL156198-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10336448. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*