Prediction of survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: results of a community-based study in Vienna

Abstract The objective of this study was the assessment of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and the definition of possible predictive factors for final hospital discharge. Out of a database of 89 557 consecutive missions of the Vienna emergency medical system (EMS) during 1990, there were 623 missions due to a collapse of non-traumatic origin: in 374 cases (60.0%) the patients were declared dead without further attempts at resuscitation. The remaining 249 patients were analysed for predictive factors at site. Survival to hospital admission: 109 patients survived to hospital admission (43.7%); by-stander support had a small impact ( P