BACKGROUND We sought to determine the impact of a rapid response system on cardiac arrest rates and mortality in a United States veteran population. METHODS We describe a prospective analysis of cardiac arrests in 9 months before and 27 months after institution of a rapid response system, and retrospective analysis of mortality 3.5 years before the intervention and 27 months after the interve...

C ardiac arrests during spinal anesthesia are described as “very rare,” “unusual,” and “unexpected,” but are actually relatively common (1– 3). The two largest prospective studies designed to evaluate the incidence of complications during spinal anesthesia reported two arrests in 1881 patients (4) and 26 arrests in 40,640 patients (5) for an overall incidence of seven arrests for every 10,000 (...

INTRODUCTION It is unknown whether the reported short-term reduction in cardiac arrests associated with the introduction of the medical emergency team (MET) system can be sustained. METHOD We conducted a prospective, controlled before-and-after examination of the effect of a MET system on the long-term incidence of cardiac arrests. We included consecutive patients admitted during three study ...

The main aims of this study were to investigate inter-relationships among offending by three generations of relatives (fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, grandfathers and grandmothers) and the concentration of offending in families. This study also investigates how far criminal relatives predict a boy's delinquency. The parents of 1395 Pittsburgh boys aged 8, 11 or 14 reported ar...

The area of female criminality has historically attracted little attention from criminologists,! and remains one in which few systematic empirical studies have been conducted. One point that has been firmly established, however, is that male arrest rates surpass female arrest rates in all societies and in all historical periods for which reliable data are available. Nonetheless, explanations fo...

BACKGROUND Little information exists regarding factors influencing perioperative cardiac arrests and their outcome. This survey evaluated the incidence, causes and outcome of perioperative cardiac arrests in a Brazilian tertiary general teaching hospital between April 1996 and March 2005. METHODS The incidence of cardiac arrest during anaesthesia was prospectively identified from an anaesthes...

BACKGROUND Public-access defibrillation with automated external defibrillators (AEDs) is being implemented in many countries worldwide with considerable financial implications. The potential benefit and economic consequences of focused or unfocused AED deployment are unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS All cardiac arrests in public in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 1994 through 2005 were geographically l...