Australian clinical review / Australian Medical Association [and] the Australian Council on Hospital Standards
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Comparative Study
Results of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in adult patients managed in a teaching hospital: clinical outcome and implications.
To assess the impact and clinical implications of therapeutic strategies for managing sudden cardiac arrest in a teaching hospital. ⋯ Compared with other studies, our results for resuscitation of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest were poor, only 5% of patients being discharged. This probably relates to the inability to revert ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation promptly by defibrillation. Improving access to defibrillation at the scene of cardiac arrest could improve the results of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. In contrast, among patients with in-hospital cardiac arrest. In contrast, among patients with in-hospital cardiac arrest, 14% of patients in monitored wards, and 24% of patients in unmonitored wards, were discharged (P less than 0.05). When cardiac arrest is not associated with acute myocardial infarction, survivors require thorough investigation and treatment to prevent recurrence.
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Current resuscitation trolleys represent the major weakness in the conduct of resuscitations for medical emergencies because they are generally not complete or standardized and lack a logical and systematic layout of equipment and drugs. This paper is the first to define the main design principles to which an ergonomically better trolley should adhere. ⋯ This paper limits discussion to the period prior to clinical trials and highlights the difficulties encountered and the time taken to produce a prototype resuscitation trolley for evaluation.