Global Differences in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Reporting

Despite technological advancement, globalization and an ever-growing evidence base which sculps the way prehospital care is delivered, there continues to be large gaps in some of the most critical areas that EMS is responsible for. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a significant area of EMS responsibility, so much that the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT) in the United States has historically required all its paramedics to possess and maintain valid Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) credentials every two years for its “traditional model of recertification.”1 So why do OHCA surveillance methods and published literature fail to transcend not only international boundaries, but also local and regional boundaries? We attempted to dig into this issue by conducting a narrative literature review to hopefully discover some of the challenges that currently face OHCA surveillance and hinder its epidemiological evidence base. We believe these challenges especially hinder OHCA researchers, but also prehospital patient care providers who are diligently attempting to keep up with best practices and the latest evidence in this field. Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in the world. In the U.S. it’s estimated that over 326,200 OHCA incidences occur annually.2 Despite health advancements and the ongoing practice of evidence-based medicine, OHCA continues to be a major public health burden. Survival to hospital discharge for OHCA has remain...
Source: JEMS Patient Care - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Exclusive Articles Cardiac & Resuscitation Source Type: news