[Prehospital cardiac arrest in Denmark. Are emergency services efficient?]

Abstract

The chain-of-survival concept is an established principle in the treatment of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Survival is improved when out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is followed by a sequence of events: early access to help, early cardiopulmonary resuscitation, early defibrillation and early advanced care. The Danish emergency medical system is only to some extent in accordance with the standards of the chain-of-survival concept. The current way of evaluating the efficiency of the system is based mainly upon the driving time for the ambulance, but the time that counts for the patient is the time between the emergency call and the start of adequate treatment. Options for defibrillation and--in some cities--advanced life support are good, but hard to exploit as ambulances frequently arrive too late for treatment to be effective.