Report has revealed the vital use of defibrillators
The use of a defibrillator on cardiac arrest patients, prior to the arrival of ambulance crews, is vital in improving cardiac arrest survival rates, a report published today by South East Coast Ambulance Service, (SECAMB), shows.
The report, which looks at out-of-hospital cardiac arrests attended by SECAMB between April 2022 and March 2023, reveals that if a defibrillator is used prior to its arrival, the average time to shock a patient is more than four minutes quicker than when the first shock is delivered by ambulance teams. And remarkably, of those patients successfully resuscitated prior to ambulance arrival by shocks from a defibrillator, who did not rearrest, all survived at least 30 days.
In the year covered by the report, SECAMB attended a total of 8,824 cardiac arrest patients, and it was viable to commence resuscitation attempts on 2,891 people (33 per cent of patients). A Return of Spontaneous Circulation or ROSC was maintained to hospital 27 per cent of the time, while 9.5 per cent of patients’ lives were saved (271 people were alive 30 days after their cardiac arrest). While the percentage of survivors is slightly down on the 11 per cent revealed in the previous year’s report, the total is still the second highest reported in SECAMB and is 1.5 per cent higher than the national average of eight per cent.
Key to early CPR and defibrillation is the attendance of SECAMB’S more than 400-strong team of volunteer Community First Responders, (CFRS), who are trained by SECAMB. CFRS respond in areas where they live and work, meaning they can often be at the scene of an emergency before ambulance crews.