Defining the limits of cardiac care
About two-thirds of cardiac-arrest patients taken to hospitals by emergency medical technicians die anyway, and probably most could be declared dead at the scene, researchers said.
The assessment of 1,240 cardiac-arrest rescue runs over two years in Ontario, Canada, found that only 1 in 500 people survived to be discharged from the hospital if EMTs could not restart the circulation, automatic defibrillators did not shock the heart, and rescue workers were not present when the heart stopped beating effectively.
The University of Toronto team led by Laurie Morrison said new guidelines letting EMTs know when to give up “would result in a decrease in the rate of transportation from 100% of patients to 37.4%,” a reduction she characterized as “pretty phenomenal.”
The report was published in the Aug. 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
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