Management of cardiac arrest by ambulance technicians and paramedics

BMJ 1995;311:508 (19 August)

Letters

Management of cardiac arrest by ambulance technicians and paramedics

Paramedics have other uses beside attending cardiac arrests

EDITOR,--The paper by U M Guly and colleagues, of Edinburgh,shows the wisdom of the former managers of the Scottish AmbulanceService who in 1989, before the widespread introduction of paramedictraining in Scotland, resolved to equip all frontline ambulanceswith defibrillators and train staff in their use.¹ Since thestart of the "Heartstart Scotland" programme about 1000 patientshave recovered completely after a cardiac arrest outside hospital.The fact that the grade of staff using defibrillators does notmaterially influence such excellent results causes no greatsurprise because, in the chain of survival after cardiac arrest,the link of early defibrillation is the most positive discriminatorand it matters little who provides it.

It might, however, be useful to analyse why paramedics in Edinburghhave not achieved significantly better outcomes for patients.Firstly, the study coincided with the deployment of paramedics. . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon Add to Technorati Technorati Twitter What's this?

Relevant Article

Paramedics and technicians are equally successful at managing cardiac arrest outside hospital: U M Guly, R G Mitchell, R Cook, D J Steedman, and C E Robertson
BMJ 1995 310: 1091-1094. [Abstract] [Full Text]