Improved Outcomes for Shockable Cardiac Arrest in Rochester, Minnesota

In an attempt to improve outcomes after cardiac arrest, the city of Rochester, Minnesota, distributed automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) to police in 1990 and to firefighters in 1998. Comatose cardiac arrest survivors routinely underwent targeted temperature management (TTM) starting in 2005. These authors assessed trends in neurologically intact survival among cardiac arrest patients in Rochester with shockable rhythms (ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia) who were treated by emergency medical services (EMS) providers and survived to hospital admission from 1991 to 2016.

Of 843 EMS calls for cardiac arrest during the study period, 355 cases had shockable rhythms and were not witnessed by EMS, and of these, 29…