Singap Med J
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The main emphasis in the Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) guidelines are in the areas of good quality chest compressions, ensuring normoventilation, removal of atropine from the cardiac arrest algorithm, removal of the use of the endotracheal route for drug administration, and renewed focus on the care provided after return of spontaneous circulation. In addition, the need for monitoring of quality of the various care procedures is emphasised. While the various ACLS procedures are being carried out, there is a need to minimise interruptions to chest compressions for maintenance of coronary perfusion pressures. In addition, the resuscitation team needs to continually look out for reversible causes of the cardiac arrest.
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Survival rates for in-hospital cardiac arrests are disappointing. Even though such arrests are often witnessed by a nurse, inadequate training may cause these first responders to have to wait for Advanced Cardiac Life Support trained personnel to arrive to perform defibrillation. ⋯ Hence, courses like the Life Support Course for Nurses, which trains nurses to recognise collapse rhythms and to institute manual defibrillation, are extremely important. Barriers to the practice of advanced life support by nurses and recommendations for the prevention and management of in-hospital cardiac arrest are discussed.
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The implementation of guidelines released by the National Resuscitation Council in 2006 involved all the main areas of resuscitation, especially basic life support and defibrillation. The emphasis was on community training, creation of simplified programmes, combining cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation, and using simpler training devices. As a result, public access defibrillation programmes have been increasingly implemented together with the CPR + automated external defibrillator programmes. A large number of instructors have also been trained.
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Singapore has a long way to go to becoming a 'heartsafe' society. Given our small size and culture of hard work in our country, we can achieve a state of good first response by our community citizens through public cardiopulmonary resuscitation and automated external defibrillators training programmes at various key sectors and through the implementation of public access defibrillation in a committed manner. For our second-line responders, investing in technology to improve response times and quality of chest compressions with earlier interventions will go a long way toward strengthening the chain of survival in the community. Building on this strong foundation and having a strong hospital-based cardiac arrest management system will ensure that those who achieve return of spontaneous circulation will more likely remain alive and be discharged from hospital in a neurologically optimal state.
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We present the revised guidelines for newborn and paediatric resuscitation for Singapore. The 2010 International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation consensus on science as well as the main recommendations from the European Resuscitation Council and American Heart Association were debated and discussed. The final recommendations for the Singapore National Resuscitation Council were derived after carefully reviewing the current available evidence in the literature and balancing the local clinical climate of practice. In addition, much effort was spent on aligning the paediatric and neonatal recommendations with the adult (especially Basic Cardiac Life Support) recommendations.