title: Cardiac arrest of nonpatients within hospital public areas.
abstract: Time to defibrillation is the most important controllable factor for survival. Hospitals also must respond to cardiac arrest in nonpatients (i.e., visitors and staff members) within their public areas. In-hospital cardiac arrest teams may be unaccustomed to resuscitating visitors under what is essentially a prehospital environment. All cardiorespiratory arrests over a 2-year period at the investigators' institution were reviewed. Six of the 749 in-hospital cardiorespiratory arrests (0.8%) occurred in visitors within public areas of the hospital. The average time to defibrillation for the public area cohort was significantly longer than for the in-hospital arrest control group (12.3 vs 2.5 minutes, p <0.0001). Further research is needed to reduce the time to defibrillation and consequently improve survival outcomes for cardiac arrest in hospital public areas.
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas 78234-6200, USA. bruce.adams@amedd.army.mil
authors.forename: Bruce D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Adams
mesh_terms: D004554:Electric Countershock; D006323:Heart Arrest / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy*; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D013997:Time Factors; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014789:Visitors to Patients