Michigan News
(2008-09-23)
A new University of Michigan study finds more lives could be saved if paramedics transported fewer heart attack patients to the hospital.
166 thousand Americans suffer full cardiac arrests every year. 93 percent of them die.
The U of M researchers looked at the decision to take those patients to the hospital after they could not be resuscitated in the field.
Dr. Comilla Sasson is the study's lead author. She says fewer of these 'futile' transports will allow E-R doctors to focus on more patients that have a better chance of survival.
"What happens is all these resources are displaced into this one patient who has no chance of survival. And you can't really help the patients who have treatable medical conditions we can help," says Sasson.
Sasson says developing a national standard for deciding which cardiac arrest patients gets transported should decrease the number of E-M-S workers injured every year in 'futile' transport accidents.
The study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association. © Copyright 2009, Michigan Radio
