‘She’s sort of breathing’: what linguistic factors determine call-taker recognition of agonal breathing in emergency calls for cardiac arrest?

In emergency ambulance calls, agonal breathing remains a barrier to the recognition of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), initiation of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and rapid dispatch. We aimed to explore whether the language used by callers to describe breathing had an impact on call-taker recognition of agonal breathing and hence cardiac arrest.

Source: Resuscitation - November 25, 2017 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Marine Riou, Stephen Ball, Teresa A. Williams, Austin Whiteside, Peter Cameron, Daniel M. Fatovich, Gavin D. Perkins, Karen Smith, Janet Bray, Madoka Inoue, Kay L. O ’Halloran, Paul Bailey, Deon Brink, Judith Finn Source Type: research