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martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

More Patients Survive Sudden Cardiac Arrest with New EMS Technique [nih.gov]:

A new study showed that a change in the type of breathing tube paramedics use to resuscitate patients with sudden cardiac arrest can significantly improve the odds of survival and save thousands of lives. More than 90 percent of Americans who experience sudden cardiac arrest die before, or soon after, reaching a hospital.

“During resuscitation, opening the airway and having proper access to it is a key factor for the survival of someone who goes into cardiac arrest outside of a hospital,” said George Sopko, M.D., M.P.H., program director in the NHLBI’s Division of Cardiovascular Sciences and coauthor of the study. “But one of the burning questions in prehospital emergency care has been, ‘Which is the best airway device?’”

[...] “While identical to techniques used by doctors in the hospital, intubation in these severe and stressful prehospital settings is very difficult and fraught with errors,” said Henry E. Wang, M.D., professor and vice chair for research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Wang was the study’s lead author.

Today, however, new devices such as laryngeal tubes, offer simpler alternatives to opening and accessing an airway. These tubes are easier to use, and the trial showed that cardiac arrest patients treated with this alternative had a higher survival rate.

[...] Overall, patients in the laryngeal tube group had significantly better outcomes. For instance, 18.3 percent of patients survived three days in the hospital and 10.8 percent survived to reach hospital discharge. For the group with traditional endotracheal intubation, the survival numbers were 15.4 and 8.1 percent, respectively. Also, the proportion of patients surviving with good brain function was higher in the laryngeal tube group.

H.E. Wang et al. Effect of a Strategy of Initial Laryngeal Tube Insertion vs. Endotracheal Intubation on 72-Hour Survival in Adults with Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: A Randomized Clinical Trial. [jamanetwork.com]Journal of the American Medical Association. August 28, 2018. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2018.7044

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