In-Hospital Bed-to-Nurse Ratio Linked with Survival to Discharge After Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

Experience with trauma systems has raised interest in designating hospitals as cardiac receiving centers in an effort to improve outcomes in cardiac arrest. To identify hospital-related factors associated with survival to discharge from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, investigators retrospectively reviewed records of all patients aged 21 and older who were treated by paramedics from a single emergency medical services system during 1995 to 2005 and who met Utstein criteria for cardiac-etiology arrest and survived to hospital admission.

Overall, 2257 patients were admitted to eight receiving hospitals. Four hospitals with fewer than 20 cases were excluded from the analysis; complete data were available for 1702 patients (75%). Case factors th…