Articles: emergency-medical-services.
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To improve patient outcome and reduce time at the scene, treatment protocols for specific injuries and rapid transport should be established with individual systems. These standards should be based on such parameters as history, mechanism of injury, physiologic status of the patient on arrival, triage criteria, and predicted transport times. Ensuring airway patency and stability is a vital function that must be rapidly and carefully performed. ⋯ Indeed, more research is necessary in order to confirm, perfect, or dispute the many traditional theories that have been a part of prehospital technology. As the field of emergency medicine continues to develop and expand, so too will the specialty of prehospital medicine. Napoleon would be proud!
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Annu Rev Public Health · Jan 1993
ReviewEmergency medical services and sudden cardiac arrest: the "chain of survival" concept.
Early access to the EMS system helps insure early CPR, defibrillation, and advanced care. Early access is easiest to achieve with 911 systems and widespread community education and publicity. It may also be taught during citizen-CPR classes. ⋯ Achievement of such a goal requires the deployment of multiple properly directed programs within an EMS system; each program lends strength to the chain of survival, thereby enhancing successful recovery and long-term survival. What benefits would occur if a majority of EMS systems in the United States could establish cost-effective programs with respectable survival rates? The AHA estimates that full implementation of potential life-saving mechanisms in the community may save 10,000-100,000 lives each year in the US (2). If the maximum survival rate for all nontraumatic cardiac arrests in mature EMS systems is about 20% (33) among the annual 400,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, 80,000 persons would be saved (33).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
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In Denmark, emergency ambulances are dispatched by 41 centres manned either by trained firemen (in Copenhagen) or policemen (outside Copenhagen). In 1990, emergency ambulance calls totalled 284,000. Utilisation of emergency ambulance services increases with urbanisation. ⋯ In less populated areas, some general practitioners give advanced life-support. Although many areas are serviced by ambulances equipped with defibrillators, the majority of patients receive only basic life-support from ambulance personnel. New initiatives resulting from a recent report by a commission appointed by central authorities, and focused on prehospital treatment, are expected to improve the service by raising the level of training given to ambulance personnel.