Relationship of Public Interest in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation with Cardiac Arrest Epidemiology and National Socioeconomic Indicators: Exploratory Infodemiology Study

Study Objective:Web-based big data analytics provides a great opportunity to measure public interest in cardiac arrest (CA) and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). This study aimed to examine associations of online interest in CPR and CA with epidemiological characteristics of out-of-hospital CA (OHCA) and national socioeconomic indicators in a set of European countries. Methods:Country-level online search popularity data for CPR and CA topics measured in relative search volume (RSV) with Google Trends (GT), published OHCA epidemiological indicators, and World Bank's socioeconomic statistics of 28 European countries for the year 2017 were analyzed for correlation using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (r(S)). Results:Whereas OHCA incidence, bystander CPR rate, and hospital survival did not correlate with RSV for CPR or CA, the rate of return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) demonstrated a positive correlation with RSV for CPR (r(S) = 0.388; P = .042). Further, RSV for CPR positively correlated with countries' gross domestic product and health expenditure (r(S) = 0.939 and 0.566; P <=.002) and negatively correlated with mortality caused by road traffic injury (r(S) = -0.412; P = .029). Conclusion:For the sample of European countries, public interest in CPR or CA showed no relationship with real bystander CPR rates and therefore could not be recommended as a proxy of community readiness to attempt resuscitation. The association of RSV for CPR with the rate of ROSC and countries' socioeconomic characteristics suggests it could be used for identifying geographies with poor performance of prehospital systems in terms of managing CA, in particular where effective epidemiological surveillance for CA may be unavailable.