Defibrillation by basic emergency medical technicians: effect on survival.

Several studies have examined the effect of early defibrillation by basic EMTs on patient survival. Although the studies have a common theme of early basic EMT defibrillation, they are diverse in locations, devices, control groups, caregivers, and protocols. They provide a confusing array of information that is difficult to review, synthesize, and interpret. Metaanalysis allows data pooling of these primary studies to combine results and statistically compare the observed variation in study outcomes. The purpose of this metaanalysis was to examine the published studies of early basic EMT defibrillation to learn whether this treatment has an effect on survival of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Analysis of the 10 studies that met inclusion criteria showed that despite variations in design, the overall effect size for all the studies was .092, indicating a 9.2% increase in survival over what would have been expected had the EMT-Ds not intervened.