Sudden cardiac arrest is the main manifestation of ischemic heart diseases, which is the leading cause of death worldwide. Each year an estimated 300,000 people suffer from cardiac arrest in the United States, with a variable incidence ranging from 36/100,000 to 128/100,000. Approximately 7.9% of cardiac arrest victims survive to hospital discharge in the United States, whereas fewer than half ...

Genetic factors may influence outcome from cardiac arrest. In Seattle, WA, paramedics collected blood specimens from patients who had suffered cardiac arrest outside of a medical institution (out of hospital cardiac arrest). We examined associations between apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype and outcome in 134 who died "in the field", 131 who died in the hospital, 198 patients who were discharged...

OBJECTIVES Pediatric out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is an uncommon event with measurable short-term survival to hospital discharge. For those who survive to hospital discharge, little is known regarding duration of survival. We sought to evaluate the arrest circumstances and long-term survival of pediatric patients who experienced an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and survived to hospital disch...

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) has attracted increasing attention over the past years because outcomes have improved impressively lately. The changes for neurological intact outcomes has been poor but several areas have achieved improving survival rates after adjusting their cardiac arrest care. The pre-hospital management is certainly key and decides whether a cardiac arrest patient can...

OBJECTIVES To report the characteristics of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients and their outcomes in the emirates of Sharjah, Ras-al-Khaimah, Umm Al-Quwain, Fujairah, and Ajman in the United Arab Emirates (collectively known as the Northern Emirates). Methods: This is a prospective descriptive cohort study of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest incidents transported by the national ambulance cr...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is influenced by the on-scene availability of different grades of ambulance personnel and other health professionals. DESIGN Population based, retrospective, observational study. SETTING County of Nottinghamshire with a population of one million. SUBJECTS All 2094 patients who had resuscitation attempted by Nottin...

To the Editor: Using data from the 6-center Penn Alliance for Therapeutic Hypothermia (PATH) registry, Perman et al found that patients with a nonshockable cardiac arrest treated with therapeutic hypothermia had a ≈3-fold increased odds of both survival to hospital discharge and favorable neurological survival. The authors posited that their analysis was more rigorous than previous observationa...

STUDY OBJECTIVE Assisted ventilation may adversely affect out-of-hospital cardiac arrest outcomes. Passive ventilation offers an alternate method of oxygen delivery for these patients. We compare the adjusted neurologically intact survival of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients receiving initial passive ventilation with those receiving initial bag-valve-mask ventilation. METHODS The autho...