Avoiding the futility of resuscitation.

Purpose: To identify patients who should not have resuscitation started or continued.

Design: Multi-disciplinary prospective study.

Subjects: Two hundred forty-one consecutive patients with cardiopulmonary arrests from January 1995 to February 1997 were evaluated, of which 200 were studied.

Advanced cardiac life support events in a community hospital and their outcome: evaluation of actual arrests.

To evaluate resuscitation efforts for patients with cardiac and/or pulmonary arrest in our hospital a retrospective study was conducted and compared with available data from other community teaching hospitals. Records of 131 consecutive patients of ages 16-98 who received resuscitation according to Advanced Cardiac Life Support protocols were reviewed. Short-term survival (return of spontaneous circulation) and discharge-from-the hospital survival were measured.