Early Defibrillation
Data regarding lives saved - How we measure our success.
The residents of the City of Rochester have long enjoyed excellent EMS care provided by Gold Cross Ambulance. Gold Cross has carried defibrillation equipment since 1970. Due to this and other factors, the odds of surviving a cardiac arrest in Rochester has historically been about 30%. When first started deploying defibrillators in squad cars, we wanted to discover whether or not this would improve patient outcomes. There needed to be a method to measure the change.
A dichotomy was created – data concerning patients first defibrillated by Gold Cross paramedics (traditional) versus patients first defibrillated by police officers. The following chart provides the data
We were able to increase patient survival from 30% up to 43% - which is coincidentally a 43% improvement. It should be noted that the number of survivors includes only those patients who are discharged from the hospital without substantial life-style impairments. They may have received a variety of medical treatments or procedures but still enjoy reasonably unimpaired lifestyles after discharge. Some of these patients have passed away since the start of this research but most survive more than one year and many more than five years. Some of our first survivors are still with us.
This data only includes those non-trauma patients who were in ventricular fibrillation when the defibrillator was attached. Police officers have saved other lives in Rochester (using CPR and other means) that are not reflected in these statistics simply because officers do serve as first responders and were there to help when needed. The total number of lives saved that might be associated with police officers serving as first responders approaches 200 going back to 1973.
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