Public perceptions and experiences of heart attack, cardiac arrest and cardiopulmonary resuscitation in London

Abstract

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a leading cause of mortality and a common cause of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the UK. The London Ambulance Service NHS Trust attends about 9800 cardiac arrests each year. Of the cardiac arrests considered viable for resuscitation during 2004–5, 79% were of presumed cardiac aetiology. The overall rate of survival for this group of patients was 4%. Although bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) can significantly improve chances of surviving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, it was initiated in only 30% of cases. https://emj.bmj.com/content/23/12/e68 This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/emj.2006.041574