Loading...
Deciding which patients who have suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrest should be taken to the hospital really depends on the estimate of their survivability by caregivers. In the absence of decision tools, basic life support (BLS) providers transport everyone — with the predictable result of futile care in many, if not most, cases, as rates of discharge with good neurologic outcome are very low for such patients.
Canadian investigators, using chart review, retrospectively developed a rule intended to get most potential survivors to the hospital, while allowing those with very low possibility for survival to be declared dead at the scene. This rule was tested in 24 EMS systems in cases attended by BLS crews equipped with automated external …