Resuscitation
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The quality of education, CPR guidelines and the chain of survival all contribute to patient outcome following cardiac arrest. Increasing concerns about patient safety have focused attention on the methods used to train and prepare doctors for clinical practice. Reductions in clinical exposure at both undergraduate and postgraduate level have been implicated in junior doctors inability to recognise and manage critically ill patients. ⋯ Simulation provides a learning opportunity for controlled clinical practice without putting patients or others at risk. This review examines the history and rationale for simulation training in resuscitation and provides some background to the learning theories that underpin it. The role of task trainers, high and low fidelity patient simulators and computer assisted simulation as teaching tools are discussed.
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Although early care in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest has been improved over the past decades, survival remains poor and neurological performance after survival is often impaired. Consequently, new therapies are needed to improve outcome. ⋯ Both therapies can restore coronary and pulmonary perfusion in cardiac arrest patients and, additionally, fibrinolysis might prevent microthrombi to the brain. In this review, the rationale, safety and efficacy of reperfusion therapy in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest will be discussed.
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Emergency medical dispatchers are the entry points to the emergency medical services (EMS). The overall performances of the dispatchers are imperative determinants of the emergency medical services dispatching system. There is little data on the cultural and language impacts on emergency medical dispatch. ⋯ Most callers were found to be emotional stable and cooperative with dispatcher's interrogations when calling for cardiac arrest victims in this Mandarin speaking population. The dispatchers have shown satisfactory interview skills in approaching emergency calls and a good ability to identify OHCA. There is a low rate of T-CPR offered to the callers in the investigation. Efforts should be made to address the deficiencies in order to maximise the function of the EMS.
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The duration of untreated ventricular fibrillation (VF) is of paramount importance for CPR success. Moreover, therapeutic interventions taking into account the interval between cardiac arrest onset and initiation of CPR improve outcome. This study was performed to investigate whether VF feature analysis could be used to estimate the duration of VF in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. ⋯ The correlation between VF ECG features and cardiac arrest times was investigated using Pearson's correlation coefficient in a subset of 40 patients with reliably estimated downtimes and artefact-free initial VF tracings. No significant correlation (p<.05) between any of the VF ECG features and downtime could be found. The duration of cardiac arrest could not be estimated reliably from human VF ECG single feature analysis.
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Transport of patients during resuscitation is a critical procedure. In both, ambulances and helicopters the quality of resuscitation is potentially hampered due to the movement of the vehicle and confined space. To date, however, no direct comparison of the quality of resuscitation at the scene, during a helicopter flight and in a moving ambulance has been made. ⋯ Resuscitation during transport is feasible and relatively efficient. There is some difference between the environments, but there is no relevant difference between helicopters and ambulances regarding the effectiveness of CPR.