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NIH funding for cardiac arrest research decreased in past 10 years
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NIH funding for cardiac arrest, the third leading cause of death in the United States, is low compared with other leading causes of death, and it has declined in the past 10 years, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
“If you look at the public health burden of cardiac arrest, it’s a major public health issue,” Robert Neumar, MD, PhD, professor and chair of emergency medicine at University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, said in a press release. “Right now, if someone has a sudden cardiac arrest outside the hospital, they have a less than one in 10 chance of surviving. If they have a sudden cardiac arrest inside the hospital, they have a one in four chance of surviving.”
Cardiac arrest research
Researchers analyzed trends in NIH funding for cardiac arrest research from 2007 to 2016. Grants were considered cardiac arrest research if it used a cardiac arrest model, aimed to improve treatment and outcomes of prehospital or in-hospital cardiac arrest, used a global ischemic brain injury model, listed cardiac arrest as a specific aim or studied pulseless ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, asystole, pulseless electrical activity or therapeutic hypothermia for cardiac arrest.
Inflation-adjusted annual funding for cardiac arrest research was the primary outcome measure. Secondary outcome measures were defined as total number of funded grants annually, number of individual principal investigators funded annually, and NIH funding for cardiac arrest research vs. other leading causes of death.
Of the 2,763 NIH-funded grants from 2007 to 2016, 27% (n = 745) were for cardiac arrest research (Fleiss’ kappa = 0.86; 95% CI, 0.8-0.93). After adjustment for inflation, funding for cardiac arrest research was $35.4 million in 2007, topped at $76.7 million in 2010, then declined to $28.5 million in 2016.
In 2015, the total amount of funding for cardiac arrest research ($40.8 million) accounted for about 0.19% of NIH’s total research grant funding ($21.2 billion). NIH’s investment per annual death for cardiac arrest is an estimated $91, whereas other CV events like stroke (approximately $2,200 per death) and heart disease (approximately $2,100 per death) were higher, with diabetes (approximately $13,000 per death) and cancer (approximately $9,000 per death) even higher, according to the researchers.
Funding trends
Funding for pediatric cardiac arrest research increased by 10-fold from 2007 (inflation-adjusted $1.1 million) to 2016 (inflation-adjusted $9.6 million). Within the study period, increases were seen in the number of pediatric individual trainee cardiac arrest grants (from 5 to 15) and cardiac arrest grants (from 5 to 17). Minimal increases were seen in funding for new grants (from 12 to 17) and investigators (from 54 to 60). The number of overall grants funded by NIH decreased from 70 to 64.
“Although these results do not elucidate the cause of this apparent funding disparity, they should inform the debate regarding optimal funding for [cardiac arrest] research in the United States,” Ryan A. Coute, BS, a medical student at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences in Missouri, and colleagues wrote. – by Darlene Dobkowski
Disclosures: Coute reports receiving funding from the Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation. Neumar reports no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the study for all other researchers’ relevant financial disclosures.
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