"Chain Of Survival" saves lives, lessens damage in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients in Japan

Improvements to the "chain of survival" increased survival and decreased residual neurological damage in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients in Japan, researchers report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. Researchers considered 8,782 bystander-witnessed cardiac arrests from May 1998 to December 2006 in Osaka, Japan. During this time period, Japanese citizens received training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), dispatcher instruction in CPR was introduced and procedures were changed to allow emergency service personnel to deliver shocks with a defibrillator without online physician oversight and to intubate patients in the field. Intubation is the placement of a flexible plastic tube into the trachea to protect the patient's airway and provide a means of mechanical ventilation. - Medical News Today