Non-Hospital Urgent and Emergency Care Units were created to deliver care to patients in chronic or acute situations and to coordinate the flow of urgent care. This descriptive study analyzed the theoretical knowledge of nurses working in these units concerning cardiopulmonary arrest and resuscitation. A questionnaire was applied to 73 nurses from 16 units in seven cities in the region of Campi...

Heart failure, life-threatening arrhythmias, and sudden cardiac death are common complications in patients with advanced chronic cardiac allograft rejection--the major limiting factor of long-term survival after heart transplant. In patients with sustained cardiorespiratory arrest refractory to cardiopulmonary resuscitation extracorporeal membrane oxygenation therapy is a therapeutic option. We...

Ambulatory and outpatient centers constantly are challenged with administrating cancer treatments in an efficient and safe way. With the advent of numerous novel cancer medications known to cause hypersensitivity reactions, nurses have become experts in managing these emergencies. However, patients rarely exhibit severe infusion reactions or cardiopulmonary arrest. Outpatient nurse knowledge an...

Sudden cardiac arrest is a major public health problem in the industrialized nations of the world. Yet, in spite of recurrent updates of the guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency cardiac care, many areas have suboptimal survival rates. Cardiocerebral resuscitation, a non-guidelines approach to therapy of primary cardiac arrest based on our animal research, was instituted in...

Objective: Asphyxia and ventricular fibrillation are the two most prevalent causes of cardiac arrest. The study investigated the differences in brain damage after cardiac arrest between asphyxial and ventricular fibrillation cardiac arrests in rats. Methods: Male healthy Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly assigned to the asphyxial group (cardiac arrest of 6 min, n=15), ventricular fibrillation g...

We read with much interest the case report titled 'Cardiopulmonary Arrest Following Cervical Epidural Steroid Injection' by Stauber et al (1) in the March/April 2012 issue. The case report highlighted a cardiopulmonary arrest which occurred within 5 seconds after the injection of epidural steroid in 1% lidocaine. The quoted amount of betamethasone was 12 mg in a total volume of 4 mL. Assuming a...

BACKGROUND Guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation recommend a chest compression rate of at least 100 compressions per minute. Animal and human studies have reported that blood flow is greatest with chest compression rates near 120/min, but few have reported rates used during out-of-hospital (OOH) cardiopulmonary resuscitation or the relationship between rate and outcome. The purpose of th...

OBJECTIVES We sought to assess the effects of cardiopulmonary bypass and profound hypothermic circulatory arrest on plasma cefazolin levels administered for antimicrobial prophylaxis in cardiovascular surgery. METHODS Four groups (10 patients per group) were prospectively studied: vascular surgery without cardiopulmonary bypass (group A), cardiac surgery with a cardiopulmonary bypass time of ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Despite a more widespread knowledge of basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation maneuvers in the community, the survival rate for patients with cardiac arrest has remained essentially unchanged in the past 30 years. Over the past few decades, many different compression-ventilation ratios have been studied in terms of best coronary and cerebral oxygen delivery, restoration of sponta...

Management of patients in cardiopulmonary arrest is challenging and can be resource consuming. Outcomes continue to be poor and physicians may feel a sense of futility when running a resuscitation. Bedside ultrasound has been utilized to guide resuscitations, diagnose correctable cardiac pathology leading to an arrest and has proved to have a prognostic value when utilized in the initial stages...