“Stay and Play” Versus “Scoop and Run” for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

Many emergency medical services (EMS) agencies have adopted the “stay and play” model of treating out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), in which immediate care is delivered on site rather than during transport to the emergency department (ED). To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, researchers analyzed data from a large prospective North American OHCA registry from 2011 to 2015.

Of the 43,969 patients who met study criteria, 27,705 were propensity matched on multiple variables, including age, initial rhythm, witnessed arrest, and bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The most common initial rhythm was asystole (43% in the intra-arrest transport group and 48% in the on-scene treatment group) and roughly half of arrests were witne…