Police as first reponders improve out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival.

Jean Louis, Clint; Cildoz, Marta; Echarri, Alfredo; Beaumont, Carlos; Mallor, Fermin; Greif, Robert; Baigorri, Miguel; Reyero, Diego (2023). Police as first reponders improve out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival. BMC emergency medicine, 23(1), p. 102. BioMed Central 10.1186/s12873-023-00876-w

[img]
Preview
Text
s12873-023-00876-w.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY).

Download (1MB) | Preview

BACKGROUND

Police forces are abundant circulating and might arrive before the emergency services to Out-of-Hospital-Cardiac-Arrest victims. If properly trained, they can provide basic life support and early defibrillation within minutes, probably increasing the survival of the victims. We evaluated the impact of local police as first responders on the survival rates of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims in Navarra, Spain, over 7 years.

METHODS

A retrospective analysis of an ongoing Out-of-Hospital Cardiac registry to compare the characteristics and survival of Out-of-Hospital-Cardiac-Arrest victims attended to in first place by local police, other first responders, and emergency ambulance services between 2014 and 2020.

RESULTS

Of 628 cases, 73.7% were men (aged 68.9 ± 15.8), and 26.3% were women (aged 65,0 ± 14,7 years, p < 0.01). Overall survival of patients attended to by police in the first place was 17.8%, other first responders 17.4% and emergency services 13.5% with no significant differences (p > 0.1). Time to initiating cardiopulmonary resuscitation is significant for survival. When police arrived first and started CPR before the emergency services, they arrived at a mean of 5.4 ± 3 min earlier (SD = 3.10). This early police intervention showed an increase in the probability of survival by 10.1%.

CONCLUSIONS

The privileged location and the sole amount of personnel of local police forces trained in life support and their fast delivery of defibrillators as first responders can improve the survival of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > Department of Intensive Care, Emergency Medicine and Anaesthesiology (DINA) > Clinic and Policlinic for Anaesthesiology and Pain Therapy

UniBE Contributor:

Greif, Robert

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health

ISSN:

1471-227X

Publisher:

BioMed Central

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pubmed Import

Date Deposited:

06 Sep 2023 09:18

Last Modified:

07 Sep 2023 15:42

Publisher DOI:

10.1186/s12873-023-00876-w

PubMed ID:

37670267

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Defibrillation Emergency medical services First responder Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest Police Prehospital Survival

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/186083

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/186083

Actions (login required)

Edit item Edit item
Provide Feedback