Impact of the Organization of the First Responders in the Remote Areas on Cardiac Arrest Victim Survival: an Utstein Analysis

Emergency medical services (EMS) provide emergency care not only in the urban but also in the remote areas which could be up to 40 minutes from the EMS station. Thus, a cardiac arrest victim in those remote areas has a low likelihood to survive the cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Therefore, we have organized first responders (who are mostly volunteer fire-fighters) in the remote areas and taught them how to perform basic life support (BLS) with use of an automated external defibrillator (AED). In the case of a cardiac arrest the medical dispatcher activates simultaneously the EMS and the first responders, who perform the BLS with the use of an AED before the arrival of EMS.

The aim of the study is to analyze and compare the survival of the cardiac arrest victims in remote areas in the time period when the first responders were not organized yet compared to the time period when the first responders were activated to perform BLS.