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By means of a telemetry-medical command system, a program based on cooperation between in-hospital physicians and mobile paramedical rescue crews, 146 consecutive victims were monitored remotely by telemetered electrocardiogram over a 24-month period. Of those successfully monitored, ventricular fibrillation or standstill was found in 15% while bradyrhythmias were found in 6%. Response time by rescue vehicle was four minutes or less in 80% of the cases. This mobile emergency care system offers advantages over new and special physician-staffed systems in that it has very fast response times, uses highly trained paramedics, possesses immediate availability, entails lower costs, permits higher utilization by applying to a greater variety of emergency conditions, and commands general community acceptance. Defibrillation of a victim outside the hospital was monitored by radio.
Eugene L. Nagel (Mon,) studied this question.