Resuscitation
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Letter Randomized Controlled Trial
Charging the defibrillator before rhythm check reduces hands-off time during CPR: a randomised simulation study.
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Multicenter Study
Duration of hospital participation in Get With the Guidelines-Resuscitation and survival of in-hospital cardiac arrest.
Get With the Guidelines (GWTG-R) is a data registry and quality improvement program for in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA). It is unknown if duration of hospital participation in GWTG-R is associated with IHCA outcomes. ⋯ Duration of hospital participation in GWTG-R was significantly associated with survival of the IHCA event, but not with survival to discharge. In VT/VF arrests, this association may have been mediated by improvements in time to defibrillation.
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Intraosseous access is an essential method in emergency medicine when other forms of vascular access are unavailable and there is an urgent need for fluid or drug therapy. A number of publications have discussed the suitability of using intraosseous access for laboratory testing. We aimed to further evaluate this issue and to study the accuracy and precision of intraosseous measurements. ⋯ Based on our findings in this animal model, cartridge based point of care instruments appear suitable for the analysis of intraosseous samples. The agreement between intraosseous and arterial analysis seems to be good enough for the method to be clinically useful. The precision, quantified in terms of CV, is at least as good for intraosseous as for arterial analysis. There is no clinically important difference between samples from left and right tibia, indicating a good reproducibility.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Wide variability in drug use in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a report from the resuscitation outcomes consortium.
Despite the publication and dissemination of the Advanced Cardiac Life Support guidelines, variability in the use of drugs during resuscitation from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest may exist between different Emergency Medical Services throughout North America. The purpose of this study was to characterize the use of such drugs and evaluate their relationship to cardiac arrest outcomes. ⋯ There is considerable variability among Emergency Medical Services agencies in their use of pharmacological therapy for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests which may be resolved by performing large randomized trials examining effects on survival.