Long-Term Survival after Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

EFFORTS to resuscitate the dead are as old as recorded history, and many techniques, including magic, ritual, and shamanism, have been employed.1 , 2 It is only in recent years that measures that regularly resuscitate patients from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest have been developed. Special emergency-service programs, known as paramedic programs and numbering over 300 in the United States, provide advanced cardiac life support after cardiac arrest.3 Well-documented studies demonstrate hospital discharge rates of up to 30 per cent for patients with out-of-hospital ventricular fibrillation.4 5 6 7 Despite numerous descriptions of paramedic programs and documentation of hospital admission and discharge rates after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, . . .