Hispanic/Latino‐Serving Hospitals Provide Less Targeted Temperature Management Following Out‐of‐Hospital Cardiac Arrest

Background Variation exists in outcomes following out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), but whether racial and ethnic disparities exist in post‐arrest provision of targeted temperature management (TTM) is unknown. Methods and Results We performed a retrospective analysis of a prospectively collected cohort of patients who survived to admission following OHCA from the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival, whose catchment area represents ~50% of the United States from 2013‐2019. Our primary exposure was race/ethnicity and primary outcome was utilization of TTM. We built a mixed‐effects model with both state of arrest and admitting hospital modeled as random intercepts to account for clustering. Among 96,695 patients (24.6% Black, 8.0% Hispanic/Latino, 63.4% White), a smaller percentage of Hispanic/Latino patients received TTM than Black or White patients (37.5% vs. 45.0 % vs 43.3%, P < .001) following OHCA. In the mixed‐effects model, Black patients (Odds Ratio [OR] 1.153, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] 1.102‐1.207, P < .001) and Hispanic/Latino patients (OR 1.086, 95% CI 1.017‐1.159, P < .001) were slightly more likely to receive TTM compared to White patients, perhaps due to worse admission neurological status. We did find community level disparity as Hispanic/Latino‐serving hospitals (defined as the top decile of hospitals that cared for the highest proportion of Hispanic/Latino patients) provided less TTM (OR 0.587, 95% CI 0.474 to 0.742, P < .001). Conclusions Reassuringly, we did not find evidence of intrahospital or interpersonal racial or ethnic disparity in the provision of TTM. However, we did find inter‐hospital, community level disparity. Hispanic/Latino‐serving hospitals provided less guideline‐recommended TTM after OHCA.