Loading...
Intravenous epinephrine has been used in the treatment of cardiac arrest since the early 1900s in North America and Europe, despite a paucity of evidence that it changes outcomes. In a prospective observational study conducted in Singapore, where IV epinephrine had not previously been used for cardiac arrest, researchers compared survival characteristics in patients older than 8 years with atraumatic cardiac arrest before and after IV epinephrine was introduced into prehospital treatment protocols.
The 615 patients enrolled before introduction of epinephrine and the 681 patients enrolled after had similar demographic and cardiac arrest characteristics. In the after group, 44% of patients actually received prehospital epinephrine. In a compar…