Survivors of cardiac arrest who received intensive care can expect long-term quality of life at reasonable expense to the health care system. Research published today in BioMed Central's open access journal Critical Care is the first to show that the allocation of resources to the treatment of heart attack patients is equally as justified as the treatment of other intensive care patient groups.

A new study finds that recent guidelines outlined by the American Heart Association (AHA) for treatments used by emergency and critical care medical practitioners on cardiac arrest patients has lead to substantial improvements in survival rates.

David Callans, MD, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, will be available to comment on the New England Journal of Medicine study on the use of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) for sudden cardiac arrests that occur in the home.

More people can survive a cardiac arrest when emergency medical workers use a new resuscitation method that starts with a round of 200 chest compressions before a defibrillator shock, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

A study last month found that being in the hospital was no guarantee of getting prompt treatment for cardiac arrest. In that study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that one-third of patients don't get a potentially lifesaving shock within the recommended two minutes.

Staging mock cardiac and respiratory arrests – “code” situations in hospital parlance – easily expose common failures in rapid response with CPR and other life-saving care for children and also set up powerful incentives to sharpen emergency skills and move fast to use them, suggests a study from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

“Anyone can save a life.” That’s the message from physicians at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

An estimated 750,000 hospitalized patients experience cardiac arrest and undergo CPR annually, and less than 30 percent of those leave the hospital alive.

Anew seven-city study on the impact of new CPR techniques supports the widespread use of the American Heart Association’s new 2005 CPR guidelines, according to the study authors in a presentation at the AHA’s Scientific Sessions November 4 in Orlando.

Heart experts at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have evidence that at least 522 lives can be saved annually in the United States and Canada by the widespread placement of automated external defibrillators, the paddle-fitted, electrical devices used to shock and revive people whose hearts have suddenly stopped beating.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) combined with bystander use of an automated external defibrillator (AED) more than doubled the chances of surviving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest compared with using CPR alone, researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2007.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have identified a new gene responsible for a rare, inherited form of sudden cardiac arrest, known as Brugada syndrome.