Implementation of community-based public access defibrillation in the PAD trial.

Background: The Public Access Defibrillation (PAD) Trial was a randomized, controlled trial designed to measure survival to hospital discharge following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OOH-CA) in community facilities trained and equipped to provide PAD, compared with community facilities trained to provide cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) without any capacity for defibrillation.

Objectives: To report the implementation of community-based lay responder emergency response programs in 1,260 participating facilities recruited for the PAD Trial in the United States and Canada.

Methods: This was a descriptive study of the characteristics of participating facilities, volunteers, and automated external defibrillator (AED) placements compiled by the PAD Trial, and a qualitative study of factors that facilitated or impeded implementation of emergency lay responder programs using focus groups of PAD Trial site coordinators.

Accuracy of arrhythmia recognition in paramedic treatment of paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia: a ten-year review.

Objectives: To examine trends in paramedic rhythm misidentification rates in the use of adenosine for presumed paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) over a ten-year period, and to determine variables associated with rhythm misidentification.

Methods: The authors conducted a retrospective analysis of all cases in which paramedics treated presumed PSVT with adenosine from 1993 to 2002. Rhythm strips were categorized as narrow or wide-complex and regular or irregular.

Attitudes of emergency department patients and visitors regarding emergency exception from informed consent in resuscitation research, community consultation, and public notification.

Objective: To assess public views on emergency exception to informed consent in resuscitation research, public awareness of such studies, and effective methods of community consultation and public notification.

Methods: A face-to-face survey was conducted in two academic Level I trauma center emergency departments (EDs) in Oregon and Minnesota from June through August 2001.

Results: Five hundred thirty people completed the survey, with an 82% response rate.

ATLS practices and survival at rural level III trauma hospitals, 1995-1999.

Objective: To determine whether Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) practices characterizing initial resuscitation and interfacility transfer at rural trauma hospitals are associated with risk-adjusted survival.

Methods: Retrospective, observational analysis of rural injured patient survival. Process-of-care variables were associated with TRISS (trauma and injury severity score)-derived Z-statistics (95% confidence intervals) for high-risk population subsets (defined below).