Resuscitation
-
Observational Study
Survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in nursing homes - A nationwide study.
Survival among nursing home residents who suffers out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is sparsely studied. Deployment of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in nursing home facilities in Denmark is unknown. We examined 30-day survival following OHCA in nursing and private home residents. ⋯ Average 30-day survival after OHCA was very low in nursing home residents, but those who received early resuscitative efforts had higher chance of survival.
-
Observational Study
Novel relocation methods for automatic external defibrillator improve out-of-hospital cardiac arrest coverage under limited resources.
Mathematical optimisation models have recently been applied to identify ideal Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) locations that maximise coverage of Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA). However, these fixed location models cannot relocate existing AEDs in a flexible way, and have nearly exclusively been applied to urban regions. We developed a flexible location model for AEDs, compared its performance to existing fixed location and population models, and explored how these perform across urban and rural regions. ⋯ Optimisation models for AEDs placement are superior to population models and should be strongly considered by communities when selecting areas for AED deployment. Compared to other models, flexible location models increase overall OHCA coverage, and decreases the distance to nearby AEDs, even in rural areas, while saving significant financial resources.
-
Observational studies are prone to a number of biases. One of these is immortal time bias. In this manuscript, we discuss immortal time bias as it pertains to post-cardiac arrest research and describes a related bias which we term "resuscitation time bias". ⋯ In this unique situation, an exposure is more likely to occur the longer the cardiac arrest continues. Since length of resuscitation is strongly associated with worse outcome, this will bias the results toward a harmful effect of the exposure. We discuss this bias and present methods to account for it.
-
Propensity scores are commonly used in observational research. This article provides a brief introduction to propensity scores aimed for resuscitation researchers. ⋯ The interpretation of these method is briefly discussed and the advantages and limitations of propensity scores are presented. Lastly, we provide some practical recommendations for the presentation of studies using propensity scores.