Survival after cardiac arrest depends on early recognition and call for help, early
cardiopulmonary resuscitation, early defibrillation and advanced life support and
post-resuscitation care. This sequence of events is often referred to as the ‘chain
of survival’. Although advanced life support is an essential part of the ‘chain of
survival’, it has never been proven to improve outcome. On the other hand, early access
to emergency medical care, early bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and
early defibrillation are clearly associated with better survival to hospital discharge
[
[1]
]. Furthermore, tailored post-resuscitation care seems of utmost importance: resuscitative
therapeutic hypothermia, for instance, improves survival and neurological outcome
[
2
,
3
]. Despite such advantages, however, outcome after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest remains
very poor. Even when only ventricular fibrillation (VF) is considered, survival rates
after hospital discharge range from 3 to 33% [
[4]
]. Reported survival rates to hospital discharge after in-hospital cardiac arrest varies
from 0–42%, the most common range being between 15 and 20% [
[5]
].Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 30, 2008
Accepted:
March 11,
2008
Received:
March 9,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2008 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
