Faster ambulance response would cut deaths from cardiac arrest

Reducing ambulance response times to 5 minutes would double the survival rate for cardiac arrest not witnessed by ambulance crews. Currently the ambulance service is statutorily obliged to arrive at the scene of 50% of emergency calls within 7 minutes and 90% of calls within 14 minutes but only 6% of patients with cardiac arrest survive. In their model based on survival from cardiac arrest and response times in Scotland between 1991 and 1998, Pell et al (p 1385) show that reducing response times to 8 and 5 minutes would have increased survival to 8% and 11% respectively.


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Relevant Article

Effect of reducing ambulance response times on deaths from out of hospital cardiac arrest: cohort study
Jill P Pell, Jane M Sirel, Andrew K Marsden, Ian Ford, and Stuart M Cobbe
BMJ 2001 322: 1385-1388. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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