Many US hospitals slow to ‘shock’ heart patients back to life
US Hospitals are slow to pull the trigger on defibrillation for cardiac patients in about a third of all cases, lessening the chances of survival and at least increasing the risk of brain damage or other permanent disabilities, researchers say.
Chances are highest for surviving cardiac arrest when the potentially life-saving shocks called defibrillation are given within the first two minutes of the heart stopping beating.
However, for each minute that the electric shock is not administered, a patient’s chances of survival drop, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Theoretically, a hospital should be the place with the highest chances of survival, because of the ready availability of defibrillators, but that’s not the case, experts say.
Researchers said they found that 39% of patients who were administered defibrillating shocks within two minutes of their heart stopping lived and eventually left the hospital. However, only 22% of those who received defibrillation more than two minutes after cardiac arrest survived.
Researchers said they saw a correlation between response times and the size of a hospital in their study. Delays were more likely at smaller hospitals, after-hours or on weekends. They also saw sluggish responses when a patient wasn’t being monitored constantly or when they were admitted to the hospital for a reason that was not cardiac-related.
They also pointed out that delays were more common in blacks, but they could not explain the reason, other than possibly the quality of hospitals sometimes used by the black cardiac victims.
