The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives has welcomed a new international initiative that aims to reduce deaths resulting from sudden cardiac arrest by 50 per cent.
Renowned international organisations, emergency medical services, and resuscitation leaders achieved consensus on the establishment of a Global Resuscitation Alliance at EMS 2016, in Copenhagen at the end of May.
This global network focuses on collaborating to implement best practices to increase survival from sudden cardiac arrest.
Timely application of several critical interventions determines the outcome from cardiac arrest when the likelihood of surviving declines by approximately 10% for every minute. Thus the intervals from collapse to application of key interventions largely determine the likelihood of survival.
These interventions include rapid dispatch, telephone cardiopulmonary resuscitation (T-CPR) (bystander CPR by trained citizens being synonymous with T-CPR), ambulance service intervention at scene with patient to begin CPR and defibrillation, provision of high performance CPR (HP-CPR), and an aspirational intervention of bystander defibrillation.
AACE Executive Officer Steve Irving says:
AACE welcomes this important and ambitious initiative. While our member services already deliver excellent quality care, it is important that we learn more about improving survival rates from Sudden Cardiac Arrest which have long remained low.
This new Alliance recognises that Bystander CPR and public education are essential, along with improving quick recognition and effective telephone advice, in the fight to improve the patient’s chances of survival.”
For further information, click here.
