Cardiac arrest survival improving in U.S. hospitals: study

More people hospitalized for cardiac arrest are surviving compared with a decade ago, according to a U.S. study, possibly because of changes in hospital treatment and the way bystanders respond when somebody collapses. The study, which appeared in the journal Circulation, found that in 2008, the death rate among U.S. residents hospitalized after cardiac arrest was just under 58 percent - down from almost 70 percent in 2001. Researchers, led by Alejandro Rabinstein of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, based their findings on a national hospital discharge database that included nearly 1.2 million people hospitalized for cardiac arrest. They stressed that the numbers accounted only for cardiac arrest victims who survive long enough to be admitted to the hospital. Many people die before then