In a recent editorial, emergency physicians proposed three interventions to improve survival rates and functional outcomes in cardiac arrest patients.
Although survival rates for people who suffer cardiac arrest outside a hospital are extremely low in most places, emergency physicians propose three interventions to improve survival rates and functional outcomes in any community and urge additional federal funding for cardiac resuscitation research in an editorial published online in Annals of Emergency Medicine.
“As a nation, we are falling far short in our efforts to improve survival for this exquisitely time-sensitive medical emergency,” said lead author Bentley J. Bobrow, MD, professor of emergency medicine atf the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson and Medical Director for the Bureau of EMS and Trauma System in Arizona. “We can and must do far better. The tools to do so are available right now and emergency physicians are uniquely positioned to lead this effort.”
Taking a cue from a recently issued set of recommendations by the Institute of Medicine for optimizing cardiac arrest care, Dr Bobrow and his team propose three concrete steps communities and the nation can take to improve survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) above the current level of 6%.
