Scottish Cardiac Arrest Resuscitation Rates by Ambulance Crews Rise
Scottish Cardiac Arrest Resuscitation Rates by Ambulance Crews Rise
More Scots are being successfully resuscitated following a cardiac arrest, based on Scottish Ambulance Service statistics.
Over the last six months, an average of 66% of patients whose arrests were witnessed by ambulance crews were alive on arrival at hospital after treatment.
Every year approximately 3,000 people are treated for an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest by ambulance crews in Scotland.
It believed the introduction of new CPR technology had helped, as had sending two ambulances to each cardiac arrest wherever possible.
Paul Gowens, lead consultant paramedic for the Scottish Ambulance Service, said:
“These are fantastic results for Scotland, putting us up there with the best you’ll see anywhere in the world. We know that the sooner people get treatment after a sudden cardiac arrest can mean the difference between life and death and we’ve implemented a number of innovative approaches over the last couple of years to prioritise patients with immediately life-threatening conditions in an effort to save more lives.”
Room for Improvement: Bystander CPR
Yet we believe more can be done by training the public in CPR. In our recent blog post, we shared findings of research by the University of Warwick, which revealed one in five UK adults will witness someone collapse who needs CPR, yet the majority of people will not act.
The research suggests that a lack of public knowledge of CPR could be costing lives. People who have been trained are three times more likely to perform it than people who have not learned CPR skills.
A British Heart Foundation survey found that the main reasons cited for feeling reluctant to step in and perform CPR were fear of causing more harm than good (47% of people surveyed in Scotland).
