Newswise — DALLAS – Aug. 05, 2024 – Emergency medical services (EMS) agencies that adopt four or more critical best practices have higher rates of survival among cardiac arrest patients than their peers, a nationwide study co-led by a UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher found. The study, published in JAMA Cardiology , identified seven key practices related to simulation training, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and transport that were associated with favorable neurological survival for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA).
“EMS agencies play a vital role in pre-hospital care for cardiac arrest patients, but survival rates vary widely across the U.S.,” said corresponding author Saket Girotra, M.
D. , Associate Professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at UT Southwestern. “Our goal was to identify the EMS practices most strongly associated with better neurological survival.
We also wanted to understand how high-performing EMS agencies organize and deliver cardiac arrest care in their communities.” Researchers collected data from the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival, reviewing 470 EMS agencies across the country with 10 or more OHCAs a year between January 2015 and December 2019. Risk-standardized rates of favorable neurological survival for OHCA at each EMS agency were estimated using multivariable hierarchical regression modeling, which ranged from 1.
8% to 14.8%. Agencies in the top quartile had a median favorable neurological s.