St Bartholomew's Hospital, in the City of London, has for many years run a Coronary Ambulance service, called by the public via the 999 system. During a 9-month period only 55% of 214 cardiac emergencies arriving at St Bartholomew's Hospital came with Coronary Ambulance support, although the service was available if called. In cases where the Coronary Ambulance was summoned, the call-out was in...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Few patients with acute stroke are treated with alteplase, often due to significant prehospital delays after symptom onset. The aims of this study were to: (1) identify factors associated with rapid first medical assessment in the emergency department after a call for ambulance assistance, and (2) determine the impact of ambulance practice on times from the ambulance call...

BACKGROUND Older people resident in care homes have a limited life expectancy and approximately two-thirds have limited mental capacity. Despite initiatives to reduce unplanned hospital admissions for this population, little is known about the involvement of emergency services in supporting residents in these settings. METHODS This paper reports on a longitudinal study that tracked the involv...

We investigated the link between ambulance transports and meteorological parameters of summer by using daily data in Osaka area, Japan. Daily observations for ambulance transports (from July 1 to September 30, 2009) were obtained from Fire Department Service in Osaka. Data of meteorological parameters in Osaka area, Japan (from July 1 to September 30, 2009) were also obtained from Japan Meteoro...

Estimates of ambulance travel times on road networks are critical for effective ambulance base placement and real-time ambulance dispatching. We introduce new methods for estimating the distribution of travel times on each road segment in a city, using Global Positioning System (GPS) data recorded during ambulance trips. Our preferred method uses a Bayesian model of the ambulance trips and GPS ...

OBJECTIVES This study utilizes a [US] national sample of emergency medical services (EMS) professionals to explore the hypothesis that demographic and work-related characteristics are associated with involvement in ambulance crashes. METHODS In 2004, a cohort of nationally registered EMS professionals was surveyed to determine ambulance crash involvement during a 12-month period. Involvement ...

BACKGROUND Emergency management of myocardial infarction (MI) is time-critical, because improved patient outcomes are associated with reduced time from symptom onset to definitive care. Previous studies have identified that women are less likely to present with chest pain. OBJECTIVE We sought to measure the effect of sex on symptoms reported to the ambulance dispatch and ambulance times for M...

INTRODUCTION Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a global health problem with low survival. Regional variation in survival has heightened interest in combining cardiac arrest registries to understand and improve OHCA outcomes. While individual OHCA registries exist in Australian and New Zealand ambulance services, until recently these registries have not been combined. The aim of this prot...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the use of emergency and non-urgent ambulance transport services by people aged 65 years and over. SETTING The study was undertaken in Queensland where the Queensland Ambulance Services (QAS) is the sole provider of emergency pre-hospital and non-urgent ambulance services for the entire state. METHODS The age and sex of 351,000 emergency and non-urgent cases treated...

BACKGROUND For stroke patients, calling an ambulance has been shown to be associated with faster times to hospital than contacting a family physician. However little is known about the impact of decisions made by family physicians on delay times for stroke patients once they have been called.We aimed to test the hypotheses that among ambulance transported stroke patients:• Factors associated wi...