Prehospital Resuscitation
The Good, the Bad, and the Futile
- William A. Gray, MD
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Excerpt
Over the past two decades, the provision of advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) in the prehospital arena has been established and refined in many communities throughout the United States and other industrialized countries. Whereas in the late 1960s no one was given much hope of surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, today, in cities like Seattle, Milwaukee, and Miami, rates of hospital discharge for cardiac arrest due to ventricular fibrillation hover around 25% to 30%.1-3 This has been accomplished only by applying the lessons learned from research on the subject, which have been incorporated into the "chain of survival" developed by the American Heart Association.4 The first link in the chain is establishing systems for rapid public access to emergency medical care (eg, by telephoning 911). The second link is widespread public training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) techniques (eg, in Houston, Tex, certification in CPR is a routine part
Footnotes
-
Reprint requests to Southwest Cardiology Associates PA, 1101 Medical Arts Ave NE, Bldg 5, Albuquerque, NM 87102 (Dr Gray).
