OBJECTIVE To determine the prognosis of patients with ventricular fibrillation in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Hong Kong and examine its relationship with the other links in the chain of survival. DESIGN Prospective descriptive study. SETTING Three accident and emergency departments, Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS Patients older than 18 years with non-traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arres...

BACKGROUND The clinical utility of determining cardiac motion on ultrasound has been reported for patients presenting in pulseless medical cardiac arrest. However, the relationship between ultrasound-documented cardiac activity and the probability of surviving pulseless electrical activity has not been examined in populations with trauma. We hypothesized that cardiac activity on ultrasound pred...

In 2012 Critical Care published many articles pertaining to the resuscitation of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and trauma. In this review, we summarize several of these articles, including those regarding advances in resuscitation techniques and methods. We examine articles pertaining to prehospital endotracheal intubation, the use of specialized devices for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and p...

BACKGROUND Each year, about 500,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest (either out-of-hospital or in-hospital) in the USA. Although significant improvements in survival have occurred through the implementation of complex high-quality protocols of care, global costs related to such management are not clearly described. METHODS We will undertake a systematic review of the published literature on co...

Brain injury is the leading cause of death in our pediatric ICU [Au et al. Crit Care Med 36:A128, 2008]. Clinical care for brain injury remains largely supportive. Therapeutic hypothermia has been shown to be effective in improving neurological outcome after adult ventricular-arrhythmia-induced cardiac arrest and neonatal asphyxia, and is under investigation as a neuroprotectant after cardiac a...

background rapid response teams (rrts) assess patients during early phases of deterioration to reduce patient morbidity and mortality. objectives this study aimed to evaluate the ability of earlier medical intervention by a rrt prompted by clinical instability in patients to reduce the incidence of and mortality from unexpected cardiac arrest at our hospital. patients and methods a nonrandomize...