Intermediate coronary care. A controlled trial.

A controlled trial of intermediate coronary care was carried out over a five-year period at a district general hospital. One thousand male patients under 65 were allocated at random into a group kept in the same ward as the coronary care unit (CCU) and a control group discharged from the CCU to a general medical ward. The intermediate care patients were nursed by the CCU staff, resuscitation equipment was immediately available and there was an efficient emergency call system. The mortality was the same in both groups and no more patients survived cardiac arrest to leave hospital in the intermediate care group than among the controls, though initial resuscitation was more often successful. The failure of intermediate coronary care was attributed to the rarity of primary ventricular fibrillation after discharge from the CCU.