title: [Treatment of acute cardiac arrest. Observations in a cardiological intensive-care unit].
abstract: Between 1976 and 1980, 301 of 3106 patients in the cardiological intensive-care unit were treated for acute cardiac arrest (9.7%). As a result of better methods of prevention and the emergency doctor system, there has since 1968 been a 50% reduction in the number of cardiac arrests. Two-thirds of the patients were male, resuscitation was successful in 34% ("successful" means that the patient was transferred to a general ward from the intensive-care unit in a clinically and haemodynamically stable condition). The prognosis was better in those with posterior-wall myocardial infarction than in those with unstable angina, mitral-valve disease with congestive heart failure, and those with anterior-wall infarction, the latter generally being more extensive and thus in principle more dangerous than posterior-wall infarction. Cardiac arrest as part of cardiogenic shock proved irreversible in every instance. After three months the survival rate was 72%, after six months 66%, after one year 62% of all patients who had required resuscitation. They would not have been alive without intensive-care treatment. These figures contradict negative comments on the purpose and usefulness of cardiological intensive-care units.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000787:Angina Pectoris / Q000150:complications; D003325:Coronary Care Units; D005260:Female; D006323:Heart Arrest / Q000209:etiology / Q000628:therapy*; D006349:Heart Valve Diseases / Q000150:complications; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008943:Mitral Valve; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000150:complications; D011379:Prognosis; D012151:Resuscitation; D012770:Shock, Cardiogenic / Q000150:complications
vernacular_title: Therapie akuter Kreislaufstillstände. Bilanz einer kardiologischen Intensivstation.