Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the United Arab Emirates : results from the PAROS study

Background The Emergency Cardiovascular Care (ECC) chain of survival, requires five elements to be acted upon to improve a patient’s chance of survival from cardiac arrest: Immediate recognition of cardiac arrest & activation of the emergency response system; early cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) with an emphasis on high-quality chest compressions; early defibrillation (ideally through public access defibrillators); early advanced life support and integrated post-cardiac arrest care. Methods National Ambulance introduced services to the Northern Emirates in February 2014 providing for each of these links in the chain of survival to be implemented. Results Over a one year period National Ambulance clinical staff in Northern Emirates attended 384 cardiac arrest incidents. Of these, 30% (n=115) had bystander CPR performed. An overall ROSC rate of 3.1% in the prehospital setting was observed (n=12) with a further 2.1% (n=9) ROSC gained on admission to Emergency Department. Utilisation of BLS measures was good among National Ambulance personnel with AED, LUCAS-2 and iGel applied in 100%, 71% and 84% application rates respectively. Conclusion The relatively low prehospital ROSC rate is attributable to low bystander CPR performance and the low availability of public access defibrillators. The rate of interventions performed by National Ambulance staff demonstrated overall good compliance.