Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Comparative Study
Hospital costs and revenue are similar for resuscitated out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and ST-segment acute myocardial infarction patients.
Care provided to patients who survive to hospital admission after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OOHCA) is sometimes viewed as expensive and a poor use of hospital resources. The objective was to describe financial parameters of care for patients resuscitated from OOHCA. ⋯ Financial parameters for OOHCA patients are similar to those of STEMI patients. Financial issues should not be a negative incentive to providing care for these patients.
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The objective was to compare time to completion, failure rate, and subjective difficulty of a new cricothyrotomy technique to the standard technique. The new bougie-assisted cricothyrotomy technique (BACT) is similar to the rapid four-step technique (RFST), but a bougie and endotracheal tube are inserted rather than a Shiley tracheostomy tube. ⋯ This study demonstrates that the BACT is faster than the standard technique and has a similar failure rate when performed by inexperienced providers on anesthetized sheep.