Background:

Perioperative cardiac arrest (PCA) is a rare but important event in the operating room.

Aim:

To describe PCA events at a Clinical Hospital in Santiago, Chile.

Material and Methods:

Registry of PCA that occurred in the operating room (OR) and during procedures not carried out in the OR between September 2006 and November 2017. Precipitating events, type of anesthesia and results of resuscitation maneuvers were described.

Results:

Eighty events (five outside of the OR) during 170,431 surgical procedures were recorded, resulting in an incidence of 4.4 events per 10,000 interventions. Hypotension/hypoperfusion was the most frequently found preexisting condition (42.5%). The main cause was the presence of preoperative complications (57.5%). Nineteen cases (23.8%) were attributable to anesthesia, with an incidence of 1.11 per 10,000 anesthetic procedures. Survival rate at hospital discharge was 52.5%. The figure for PCA caused by anesthesia was 84.2%.

Conclusions:

The incidence of PCA and its survival is similar to that reported abroad. In general, PCA has a better prognosis than other types of cardiac arrest, especially if it has an anesthetic cause.