Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Report
The sixth Annual Report from the Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Register (OHCAR) been published.
The report shows some key messages:
· an increase in survival to 6.4% for cardiac arrest patients
· an increase on 9% in the number of patients receiving bystander CPR prior to the arrival of EMS
· an increase of 3% in the number of patients who had the first shock delivered before the arrival of EMS
· 22% of patients who survived had defibrillation attempted before the arrival of EMS.
These are all good news stories and emphasize the importance of early decisive action for the patient and accurate data collection.
OHCAR was established in November 2007 in accordance with the recommendations of the Report of the Task Force on Sudden Cardiac Death. The OHCAR project is carried out in collaboration with the NW Public Health Department, NUI Galway and PHECC.
Aims and Objectives
The purpose of OHCAR is to gather information on out of-hospital cardiac arrests attended by the Emergency Medical Services in which resuscitation is attempted.
In 2012, OHCAR became one of only three national OHCA registries in Europe.
OHCAR data is increasingly used in national reports and documents. Most recently OHCAR
data from 2012 and 2013 has been included in Health Technology Assessment of Public
Access Defibrillation by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA). Since September 2014 OHCAR has been providing monthly data to the National Ambulance
Service (NAS) to facilitate reporting of OHCA outcomes, which is the first Clinical Key
Performance Indicator (KPI) for the NAS.