Ugeskrift for laeger
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Ugeskrift for laeger · Mar 2008
Comparative Study[How is out-of-hospital cardiac arrest dispatched?].
In Denmark any person needing urgent medical help can dial 112 and get in contact with an alarm centre where a non-health educated operator assesses what kind of help is needed. A specific dispatch report (DR) is used if an ambulance is dispatched. We assessed which DRs were used for the Copenhagen Mobile Emergency Care Unit (MECU) in the case of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. ⋯ Only 32% of the cases with cardiac arrest had a correct DR. We suspect that some of the patients had an unrecognized cardiac arrest at the time of contact to the alarm centre. The current alarm system can presumably be improved. The alarm centre has a central role in such a quality improvement.