By Cherie Black
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Copyright 2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is at an all-time high in King County, and a new method of resuscitation used by emergency medical responders in King County may be the reason.
The findings, published Monday in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, showed that cardiac arrest survival rates in King County jumped from 33 percent between 2002 and 2004 to 46 percent since a new cardiopulmonary resuscitation protocol was adopted in 2005.
The new guidelines place more emphasis on CPR, compared with traditional guidelines, which called for some CPR but also emphasized shocking patients repeatedly with a defibrillator before beginning chest compressions.
In cardiac arrest, the heart rhythm often suddenly becomes erratic, rendering the heart unable to effectively pump blood. Victims quickly collapse and die unless they are resuscitated within a few minutes, according to Public Health - Seattle & King County.
Nationally, resuscitation rates outside of a hospital are between 5 percent and 8 percent, making King County the gold standard for emergency response, and an area renowned for its care, said Dr. Stephen Anderson, chairman of emergency services at Auburn Regional Medical Center.
“This new protocol is a quantum leap forward to save more lives in a community that already saves more lives than anyone,” he said. “Now, for every 100 calls you go on, 13 more people will live. I don’t think anyone thought we would jump to nearly 50 percent.”
Health officials in King County began implementing the new guidelines in January 2005, nearly a year before the American Heart Association published them officially in December 2005, said Dr. Thomas Rea, medical director for King County Medic One and lead author of the study.
Based on experimental data from other communities and evaluating King County experiences, health officials decided to see if the new way really did make a difference.
Through a collaborative effort, county emergency medical services agencies integrated the changes into their regular training cycles, which included reprogramming defibrillators to support the new guidelines.
Rea said he and his colleagues also looked at how quickly they started providing CPR after a defibrillator shock with the previous protocol versus the new recommendations. They found the average time between the first shock and the starting CPR dropped from 28 seconds to seven seconds.
“My hope is that it will help in other places beyond here,” he said. “If what we have experienced in King County translates to other communities, it could mean a substantial number of lives saved from cardiac arrest.”