NON-INVASIVE MONITORING AND TREATMENT OF SUBJECTS IN CARDIAC ARREST USING ECG PARAMETERS PREDICTIVE OF OUTCOME

摘要

A non-invasive method of guiding therapeutic interventions to a subject in cardiac arrest. The method includes connecting electrodes to the body (22) of the subject and detecting an analog electrical potential which is proportional to the electrical potential generated by the subject's heart. A predictive parameter determining apparatus (20) samples the analog potential for a selected interval of time to obtain a set of time domain samples. By transforming these time domain samples into a frequency domain power spectrum, apparatus (20) obtains a power distribution of the electrical potential. At least one amplitude parameter of the ECG time domain signal interval or frequency parameter of the power spectrum is determined and monitored. The parameters are predictive of a clinically relevant cardiac arrest outcome for the subject. Therapy is administered to the subject through a defibrillator (21) or a resuscitator (25) as a function of the value of the parameters.