Resuscitate!: How Your Community Can Improve Survival from Sudden Cardiac Arrest

Foreword by Roger D. White, M.D.

Foreword ix Cardiac arrest occurs in people’s homes as well as in public places. It can strike anytime. For decades, it has been the leading cause of death among adults. Given the magnitude of this public health problem, you might suppose that the highest priority of emergency medical services (EMS) would be to improve survival rates. It is true that EMS systems in a few communities do manage cardiac arrest reasonably well. Regrettably, however, most do not. In fact, if you were to suffer sudden cardiac arrest while on vacation in some cities, you would be dozens of times more likely to die than if you had gone on vacation somewhere else. What accounts for this amazing variance in rates of survival? In this book, Mickey Eisenberg, an expert EMS medical director, gives you the answers, and he lays out a specific action plan consisting of fifteen steps for EMS systems that are serious about raising survival rates in their communities. The book, intended for Dr. Eisenberg’s fellow medical directors and for EMS administrators as well as for elected officials and concerned citizens, outlines what all of us can do to help more people survive sudden cardiac arrest. If you care about sudden cardiac arrest in your community, and about how your community’s EMS system is responding to this critical emergency, I can think of no more important book for you to read than this one. Nor can I think of anyone more qualified to have written it than Mickey Eisenberg. He has been conducting research since 1975 on how communities manage cardiac arrest in King County, Washington, where he established one of the world’s first community-level surveillance programs for cardiac arrest. But he didn’t stop there. Not content just to measure and chronicle cardiac arrest, Dr. Eisenberg also took what he had learned and used that information to found innovative programs aimed at x foreword improving survival rates. In 1980, he and his colleagues began the first program in the world to let emergency medical technicians (not just paramedics) perform defibrillation, and shortly thereafter they started the world’s first systematic program for emergency dispatchers to tell callers over the phone how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation while waiting for help to arrive. The published research stemming from these two programs alone has had a profound impact on EMS care, and the paradigms for both programs are now universally accepted and endorsed by international organizations. Dr. Eisenberg and his research team have also explored innovative methods of teaching CPR and defibrillation to the public. They continue to push the envelope of resuscitation from sudden cardiac arrest, and as the authors of more than 150 scientific articles on the topic, they are widely recognized as leaders in research and education related to the field. Dr. Eisenberg names three communities as having high rates of survival for cardiac arrest—the city of Seattle, the greater King County area, and my own community of Rochester, Minnesota. The book describes, in very accessible language, the reasons for these communities’ success. Their EMS systems have several things in common— strong medical and administrative leadership, high-quality training and continuing education, continuous quality improvement, high expectations—all of which add up to an uncompromising culture of excellence, one in which the question on everyone’s lips is always “How can we do better?” If you take this book to heart, so to speak, I guarantee that you will improve survival rates in your community, too. roger d. white m.d., f.a.c.c., mayo clinic Department of Anesthesiology and Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine Medical Director, City of Rochester and Olmsted County Early Defibrillation Program Co-Medical Director, Gold Cross Ambulance Service, Rochester, Minnesota ...