Survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OOHCA) in an urban environment is directly proportional to speed of defibrillation and effective bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). We hypothesized that the hospital discharge rate from rural OOHCA was affected by the same factors.We studied all OOHCAs in 1998 for rural Alachua County, Florida, with one emergency medical system (EMS) transport provider and three hospitals. All EMS identified OOHCA were reviewed retrospectively, as were EMS and hospital records. The 1998 County population was 211403; 1495 deaths from all causes occurred (70.7/10(4) pop). Of 167 OOHCAs (7.9/10(4) pop), 145 were of cardiac etiology; 22 were excluded (13 scene deaths, four traumatic, one intraoperative and three respiratory arrests, one arrest during a hospital-to-hospital transfer) and in eight outcome data were not available in any form. A total of 137/145 (94.5

作者：A Joseph, Layon；Andrea, Gabrielli；Bruce W, Goldfeder；Armando, Hevia；Ahamed H, Idris

来源：Resuscitation 2003 年 56卷 1期