Physician presence at out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is not necessarily the cause of improved survival

Pieter Francsois Fouche; Paul Andrew Jennings

doi:10.1186/s13049-016-0282-8

Physician presence at out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is not necessarily the cause of improved survival

Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med. 2016 Jul 4;24(1):88. doi: 10.1186/s13049-016-0282-8.

Authors

Pieter Francsois Fouche¹, Paul Andrew Jennings²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Community Emergency Health and Paramedic Practice, Monash University, Building H McMahons Road, Frankston, Melbourne, 3199, Australia. PFOUCHE@ambulance.nsw.gov.au.
² Department of Community Emergency Health and Paramedic Practice, Monash University, Building H McMahons Road, Frankston, Melbourne, 3199, Australia.

Abstract

A recent publication Hiltunen et al. on Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) in Finland show increased survival when a physician attends an OHCA, compared to EMS. But it is likely that physicians attend OHCA patients with a different prognosis due to comorbidity or illness severity, which causes confounding by indication and is the likely cause for the physician and survival association.

Keywords: Cardiac arrest; Confounding; Out-of-hospital.

Publication types

Letter

MeSH terms

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation / ethics*
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation / methods
Emergency Medical Services*
Finland / epidemiology
Humans
Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest / mortality
Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest / therapy*
Prognosis
Registries*
Survival Rate / trends