PROBLEM/CONDITION: Each year, approximately 300,000 persons in the United States experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA); approximately 92% of persons who experience an OHCA event die. An OHCA is defined as cessation of cardiac mechanical activity that occurs outside of the hospital setting and is confirmed by the absence of signs of circulation. Whereas an OHCA can occur from noncardiac causes (i.e., trauma, drowning, overdose, asphyxia, electrocution, primary respiratory arrests, and other noncardiac etiologies), the majority (70%--85%) of such events have a cardiac cause. The majority of persons who experience an OHCA event, irrespective of etiology, do not receive bystander-assisted cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or other timely interventions that are known to improve the likelihood of survival to hospital discharge (e.g., defibrillation). Because nearly half of cardiac arrest events are witnessed, efforts to increase survival rates should focus on timely and effective delivery of interventions by bystanders and emergency medical services (EMS) personnel. This is the first report to provide summary data from an OHCA surveillance registry in the United States. REPORTING PERIOD: This report summarizes surveillance data collected during October 1, 2005-- December 31, 2010. DESCRIPTION OF THE SYSTEM: In 2004, CDC established the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES) in collaboration with the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine. This registry evaluates only OHCA events of presumed cardiac etiology that involve persons who received resuscitative efforts, including CPR or defibrillation. Participating sites collect data from three sources that define the continuum of emergency cardiac care: 911 dispatch centers, EMS providers, and receiving hospitals. OHCA is defined in CARES as a cardiac arrest that occurred in the prehospital setting, had a presumed cardiac etiology, and involved a person who received resuscitative efforts, including CPR or defibrillation. RESULTS: During October 1, 2005--December 31, 2010, a total of 40,274 OHCA records were submitted to the CARES registry. After noncardiac etiology arrests and missing hospital outcomes were excluded from the analysis (n = 8,585), 31,689 OHCA events of presumed cardiac etiology (e.g., myocardial infarction or arrhythmia) that received resuscitation efforts in the prehospital setting were analyzed. The mean age at cardiac arrest was 64.0 years (standard deviation [SD]: 18.2); 61.1% of persons who experienced OHCA were male (n = 19,360). According to local EMS agency protocols, 21.6% of patients were pronounced dead after resuscitation efforts were terminated in the prehospital setting. The survival rate to hospital admission was 26.3%, and the overall survival rate to hospital discharge was 9.6%. Approximately 36.7% of OHCA events were witnessed by a bystander. Only 33.3% of all patients received bystander CPR, and only 3.7% were treated by bystanders with an automated external defibrillator (AED) before the arrival of EMS providers. The group most likely to survive an OHCA are persons who are witnessed to collapse by a bystander and found in a shockable rhythm (e.g., ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia). Among this group, survival to discharge was 30.1%. A subgroup analysis was performed among persons who experienced OHCA events that were not witnessed by EMS personnel to evaluate rates of bystander CPR for these persons. After exclusion of 3,400 OHCA events that occurred after the arrival of EMS providers, bystander CPR information was analyzed for 28,289 events. In this group, whites were significantly more likely to receive CPR than blacks, Hispanics, or members of other racial/ethnic populations (p<0.001). Overall survival to hospital discharge of patients whose events were not witnessed by EMS personnel was 8.5%. Of these, patients who received bystander CPR had a significantly higher rate of overall survival (11.2%) than those who did not (7.0%) (p<0.001). INTERPRETATION: CARES data have helped identify opportunities for improvement in OHCA care. The registry is being used continually to monitor prehospital performance and selected aspects of hospital care to improve quality of care and increase rates of survival following OHCA. CARES data confirm that patients who receive CPR from bystanders have a greater chance of surviving OHCA than those who do not. PUBLIC HEALTH ACTIONS: Medical directors and public health professionals in participating communities use CARES data to measure and improve the quality of prehospital care for persons experiencing OHCA. Tracking performance longitudinally allows communities to better understand which elements of their care are working well and which elements need improvement. Education of public officials and community members about the importance of increasing rates of bystander CPR and promoting the use of early defibrillation by lay and professional rescuers is critical to increasing survival rates. Reporting at the state and local levels can enable state and local public health and EMS agencies to coordinate their efforts to target improving emergency response for OHCA events, regardless of etiology, which can lead to improvement in OHCA survival rates.

/pdf/out-of-hospital-cardiac-arrest-surveillance-cardiac-arrest-i272va9oo5.pdf

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest surveillance --- Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES), United States, October 1, 2005--December 31, 2010.

Edited by Institute of Medicine. The National Academies Press Washington, DC 2007 310 10: 0-309-10174-3 13: 978-0-309-10174-5 

“Emergency care is a window on health care revealing both what is right and what is wrong with the care delivery system” 

The report by the committee on the future of emergency care in the US health system constructively looks at where emergency medical services (EMS) are in the USA, where they need to be and how to get there. The committee has removed the constraints of politics and borders in order to evaluate what is good and what needs to change with specific action points …

https://emj.bmj.com/content/emermed/26/9/685.full.pdf

Emergency medical services at the crossroads

/pdf/guidelines-for-prehospital-management-of-traumatic-brain-30vgy7ukhc.pdf

Guidelines for prehospital management of traumatic brain injury.

OBJECTIVE:: To examine the epidemiology of pediatric patient visits to emergency departments (ED). METHODS:: We conducted a cross-sectional study of pediatric ED visits at the participating Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) hospitals in 2002. We provide descriptive characteristics of pediatric ED visits and a comparison of the study database to the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). Bivariate analyses were calculated to assess characteristics associated with hospital admission, death in the ED, and length of ED visit. We also performed multivariate regression to model the likelihood of admission to the hospital. RESULTS:: Mean patient age was 6.2 years; 53.5% were boys; 47.5% black; and 43.2% had Medicaid insurance. The most common ED diagnoses were fever, upper respiratory infection, asthma, otitis media, and viral syndromes. The inpatient admission rate was 11.6%. The most common diagnoses requiring hospitalization were asthma, dehydration, fever, bronchiolitis, and pneumonia. In multivariate analysis, patients who were black or Hispanic, had Medicaid insurance or were uninsured, or were older than 1 year were less likely to be hospitalized. Demographics of the PECARN population were similar to NHAMCS, with notable exceptions of a larger proportion of black patients and of admitted patients from the PECARN EDs. CONCLUSION:: We describe previously unavailable epidemiological information about childhood illnesses and injuries that can inform development of future studies on the effectiveness, outcomes, and quality of emergency medical services for children. Most pediatric ED patients in our study sought care for infectious causes or asthma and were discharged from the ED. Hospital admission rate differed according to age, payer type, race/ethnicity, and diagnosis. Language: en

Don Wood

Papers

National EMS Research Agenda.