Cardiac arrest during neuraxial anesthesia: are all databases comparable?

1. The Closed Claims Database (CCDB) (2,3) is 60 times larger than Kopp’s. 2. The outcome at the Mayo Clinic should be better than at the varied hospitals represented in the CCDB, where fewer resources are available compared with a tertiary care facility. 3. The distribution of serious outcomes in the CCDB does not necessarily match those from a single institution’s sample. 4. Because the CCDB arose from malpractice claims, there can be no meaningful statistical comparisons with the Mayo Clinic’s, where cases not involving a malpractice claim are equally likely to be included as those that do.