Resuscitation in Europe: a tale of five European regions

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field AIM: To describe cardiac arrest data from five emergency medical services (EMS) systems in Europe with regard to survival from an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. METHODS: Based on recommend...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Resuscitation
Main Authors: Herlitz, J, Bahr, J, Fischer, M, Kuisma, M, Lexow, K, Thorgeirsson, G
Other Authors: Division of Cardiology, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Göteborg, Sweden.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2009
Subjects:
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation
Data Collection
Emergency Medical Services
Europe
Evaluation Studies as Topic
Female
Follow-Up Studies
Heart Arrest
Humans
Male
Multicenter Studies as Topic
Survival Analysis
Survival Rate
Norway
Utstein
Iceland
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2336/47077
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0300-9572(99)00045-3
Description
Summary:To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field AIM: To describe cardiac arrest data from five emergency medical services (EMS) systems in Europe with regard to survival from an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. METHODS: Based on recommendations from various countries in Europe EMS systems were approached with regard to survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Five EMS systems were asked to report their cardiac arrest data according to the Utstein style. RESULTS: The five selected EMS systems were: Bonn (Germany), Göttingen (Germany), Helsinki (Finland), Reykjavik (Iceland) and Stavanger (Norway). For patients with a bystander witnessed arrest of cardiac aetiology the percentage of patients being discharged alive from hospital in these regions were: 21, 33, 23, 23 and 35. The corresponding percentages for patients fulfilling criteria as above and being found in ventricular fibrillation were: 32, 42, 32, 27 and 55. CONCLUSIONS: Many EMS systems in Europe show extremely good results in terms of survival after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Some of the results should be interpreted with caution since they were based on relatively small sample sizes. Furthermore, the results from one of the regions (Stavanger) was unit based and not community based.

Similar Items