COVID-19 patients suffering from in-hospital cardiac arrest had 100% in-hospital mortality regardless of the baseline comorbidities, presenting illness severity, and location of arrest.

Out of 1,094 patients hospitalized for coronavirus disease 2019 during the study period, 63 patients suffered from in-hospital cardiac arrest with attempted resuscitation and were included in this study. The median age was 66 years, and 49.2% were males.

The majority of patients were African Americans (90.5%). The most common comorbidities were hypertension (88.9%), obesity (69.8%), diabetes (60.3%), and chronic kidney disease (33.3%). Eighteen patients (28.9%) had a Charlson Comorbidity Index of 0–2.

The most common presenting symptoms were shortness of breath (63.5%), fever (52.4%), and cough (46%). The median duration of symptoms prior to admission was 14 days.

The majority of in-hospital cardiac arrest (84.1%) occurred in the ICU. Time to initiation of advanced cardiac life support protocol was less than 1 minute for all in-hospital cardiac arrest in the ICU and less than 2 minutes for the remaining patients.

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