Single-arm feasibility trial of a resilience intervention for cardiac arrest survivors and their family caregivers, Recovering Together after Cardiac Arrest.

Abstract

Emotional distress is common in cardiac arrest (CA) survivors and their family caregivers and undermines long-term health and quality of life. To address this, we adapted a resilience intervention for survivors and their caregivers, entitled Recovering Together after Cardiac Arrest (RT-CA). We conducted a single-arm feasibility trial of RT-CA between 09/2024-03/2025. We enrolled dyads of consecutively admitted CA survivors at Massachusetts General Hospital and their primary family caregivers. adult English speakers, survivors must have ability to meaningfully participate (Short Form Mini Mental State Exam ≥5), one dyad member must have emotional distress (≥8 on either subscale of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [HADS]). Dyads participated in six weekly sessions with a clinical psychologist focused on building mindfulness and coping skills. Feasibility outcomes were feasibility of recruitment, assessments, adherence; acceptability outcomes were satisfaction, credibility, expectancy. Dyads completed pre- and post-test psychosocial measures and participated in exit interviews. We calculated frequencies and proportions of our outcomes, conducted exploratory paired t-tests to examine initial signals of changes in psychosocial measures, and performed explanatory-sequential mixed methods to integrate data sources. We screened 12 dyads and enrolled 7. RT-CA exceeded most feasibility and acceptability benchmarks (>70 % on 7 of 8). In exploratory analyses, participants experienced preliminary, yet meaningful reductions in emotional distress (HADS anxiety survivors: mean [95 % CI] = -5.4 [-3.4, -7.5], p < 0.001; depression survivors = -5.1 [-2.2, -8], p < 0.01; anxiety caregivers = -3.1 [-0.8, -5.5], p < 0.05; depression caregivers = -3.5 [-8, 1.1], p > 0.05). Mixed-methods analysis indicated general concordance between quantitative and qualitative data. Results support preliminary feasibility of RT-CA. Further testing in a randomized controlled trial is now required. Clinicaltrials.gov #NCT06517394.