The adherence to modified callers queries (MCQ) of emergency medical dispatch (EMD) during COVID-19 outbreaks for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

Purpose: Setting modified-callers-queries (MCQ) was recommended for emergency medical dispatch (EMD) for COVID-19 risks screening during the outbreaks For out-of-hospital cardiac arrest calls, the adherence to MCQ and its influence to dispatcher-assisted CPR were not known Materials and methods: A COVID-19-risk MCQ protocol was designed for EMD for safer corresponding response The three major additional queries included A The quarantine status of patient/family, B Patient symptoms (i e , fever/or respiratory complaints), C TOCC situations in the recent 14-day period of patient/family including: recent travel (T) to the epidemic regions, occupations (O) with high risk for client contact such as healthcare provider, flight attendant, etc , any close contact (C1) with confirmed COVID-19 patient or person been quarantined, and close contact with a cluster (C2) of people with similar symptoms The dispatchers’ adherence to the COVID-19-risk MCQ during the outbreaks for EMS calls of non-traumatic OHCA was retrospectively evaluated using audio records Data were analyzed using Pearson's chi-squared test and Kruskal-Wallis test with SPSS-Version-22 Results: For totally 153 eligible OHCA calls, the adherence to querying were noted for A quarantine on 44 (28 8%) cases, for B symptoms on 82 (53 6%), for C any TOCC on 105 (68 6%) cases – T: 102 (66 7%), O: 31 (20 2%), C1: 71 (46 4%), C2: 26 (17 0%);and completed TOCC on only 14 (9 2%) cases Completed MCQ (all three A, B, C) were adhered on only 10 (6 5%;[95%CI: 3 6–11 6%]) cases, and 45 (29 4%;[95%CI: 22 8–37 1%]) cases failed to receive any COVID-19-risk MCQ Eight cases (8/105, 7 6%) inadequately received TOCC queries prior to recognizing patient consciousness The time intervals (median, IOR) for call-to-chest-compression and total MCQ of those completely queried cases were 290 (206, 334) s and 52 (22, 94) s Conclusions: The EMD adherence to COVID-19-risk MCQ would be unsatisfied to achieve under the circumstances of OHCA MCQ would influence call-to-compression for dispatcher-assisted CPR