Critical care medicine
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Rapid response systems have been advocated as a potential model to identify and intervene in patients who are experiencing deterioration on general hospital wards. ⋯ We found weak evidence that rapid response systems are associated with a reduction in hospital mortality and cardiac arrest rates, but limitations in the quality of the original studies, the wide confidence intervals, and the presence of heterogeneity limited our ability to conclude that rapid response systems are effective interventions. Large randomized controlled trials are needed to clarify the efficacy of rapid response systems before they should become standard of care.