Background: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) causes brain injury. Functional status of survivors at hospital discharge is a core resuscitation measure, frequently using the Cerebral Performance Category (CPC) or modified Rankin Scale (mRS). Which scale better predicts long-term survival following OHCA is not known.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a critical intervention to improve survival following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. We evaluated the quality of bystander CPR and whether performance varied according to the number of bystanders or provision of telecommunicator CPR (TCPR). Methods and Results We investigated non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest occurring in a large metropolitan emergency medical system during a 6-month period.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: In hospital-based studies, patients intubated by physicians while in an inclined position compared to supine position had a higher rate of first pass success and lower rate of peri-intubation complications. We evaluated the impact of patient positioning on prehospital endotracheal intubation in an EMS system with rapid sequence induction capability. We hypothesized that patients in the inclined position would have a higher first-pass success rate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The HeartRescue Project is a multistate public health initiative focused on establishing statewide out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) systems of care to improve case capture and OHCA care in the community, by emergency medical services (EMS), and at hospital level.
Methods And Results: From 2011 to 2015 in the 5 original HeartRescue states, all adults with EMS-treated OHCA due to a presumed cardiac cause were included. In an adult population of 32.