Individuals who suffer cardiac arrest are more likely to survive when taken immediately to a specialist heart center rather than the nearest general hospital, according to a study recently published in the European Heart Journal.
For the study, researchers examined data on more than 40,000 patients who experienced cardiac arrest outside of the hospital setting and were then treated at either a heart center or general hospital in Denmark between 2001 and 2013. Approximately 9 percent of patients were still alive 30 days after the event. Heart centers were associated with an 11 percent increase in the likelihood of survival.
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The heart centers were capable of performing the invasive diagnostic and treatment procedures coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention. These procedures were independently associated with a 45 percent increased chance of survival.
"We acknowledge that you should always be careful when generalizing results to other countries with different emergency services, treatments available before arrival at hospital, medical culture and so on," said Tinne Tranberg, MD, PhD, a cardiologist at Aarhus (Denmark) University Hospital and the study's lead author. "However, we do think our results are applicable to other countries. These findings are in line with experience regarding performance of percutaneous coronary intervention, which show that high-volume invasive heart centers are associated with better outcomes for patients."
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