JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
-
Multicenter Study Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical Trial
Improved out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival through the inexpensive optimization of an existing defibrillation program: OPALS study phase II. Ontario Prehospital Advanced Life Support.
Survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are low; published survival rates in Ontario are only 2.5%. This study represents phase II of the Ontario Prehospital Advanced Life Support (OPALS) study, which is designed to systematically evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of various prehospital interventions for patients with cardiac arrest, trauma, and critical illnesses. ⋯ An inexpensive, multifaceted system optimization approach to rapid defibrillation can lead to significant improvements in survival after cardiac arrest in a large BLS-D EMS system.