Description of Emergency Medical Services, treatment of cardiac arrest patients and cardiac arrest registries in Europe
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Open Access
Description of Emergency Medical Services, treatment of cardiac arrest patients and cardiac arrest registries in Europe Ingvild B. M. Tjelmeland1,2,3* , Siobhan Masterson4, Johan Herlitz5,6, Jan Wnent1,7,8, Leo Bossaert6,9, Fernando Rosell-Ortiz6,10, Kristin Alm-Kruse3,11, Berthold Bein12,13, Gisela Lilja14, Jan-Thorsten Gräsner1,6,7 and on behalf of GL2020 Epidemiology group and participating countries
Abstract Background: Variation in the incidence, survival rate and factors associated with survival after cardiac arrest in Europe is reported. Some studies have tried to fill the knowledge gap regarding the epidemiology of out-ofhospital cardiac arrest in Europe but were unable to identify reasons for the reported differences. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to describe European Emergency Medical Systems, particularly from the perspective of country and ambulance service characteristics, cardiac arrest identification, dispatch, treatment, and monitoring. Methods: An online questionnaire with 51 questions about ambulance and dispatch characteristics, on-scene management of cardiac arrest and the availability and dataset in cardiac arrest registries, was sent to all national coordinators who participated in the European Registry of Cardiac Arrest studies. In addition, individual invitations were sent to the remaining European countries. Results: Participants from 28 European countries responded to the questionnaire. Results were combined with official information on population density. Overall, the number of Emergency Medical Service missions, level of training of personnel, availability of Helicopter Emergency Medical Services and the involvement of first responders varied across and within countries. There were similarities in team training, availability of key resuscitation equipment and permission for ongoing performance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation during transported. The quality of reporting to cardiac arrest registries varied, as well as the data availability in the registries. Conclusions: Throughout Europe there are important differences in Emergency Medical Service systems and the response to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Explaining these differences is complicated due to significant variation in how variables are reported to and used in registries. Keywords: Emergency Medical Services (EMS), Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, Cardiac arrest registries, Dispatch, Epidemiology of cardiac arrest
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Institute for Emergency Medicine, University-Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Arnold-Heller-Str. 3, 24105 Kiel, Germany 2 Division of Prehospital Services, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author
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