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People with
Cardiac Arrest less likely to survive if
admitted on weekend
Newswise — People
admitted to the hospital on the weekend
after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are
less likely to survive than people admitted
on a weekday, according to research that was
presented at the upcoming American Academy
of Neurology 60th Anniversary Annual Meeting
in Chicago, April 12–19, 2008.
For the study,
researchers analyzed the Nationwide
Inpatient Sample, a national database of 20
percent of all hospital admissions for
cardiac arrest to U.S. hospitals from 1990
to 2004.
The analysis included 67,554
admissions. Cardiac arrest is when the heart
slows or stops working. Brain death can
occur in just four to six minutes after
cardiac arrest.
The study found people
admitted to the hospital on a weekend after
an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest were 13.4
percent more likely to die than those people
admitted on a weekday.
The result remained
the same after controlling for hospital
size, teaching status, rural hospital
compared to urban hospital, region, age,
gender and other illnesses.
"A higher death rate
among patients admitted on weekends may be
due to lack of resources for treating
cardiac arrest," said study author Richard
M. Dubinsky, MD, MPH, with the University of
Kansas Medical Center in
Kansas City, and Fellow of the American
Academy of Neurology.
"It’s probable that
improved resuscitation efforts in the
emergency department and outside of
hospitals, such as automatic defibrillators,
allow more patients to survive until
hospital admission, explaining the increased
risk of death from 2000-2004 compared to
1990-1999."
The study also found
men were less likely to die after being
admitted to the hospital for cardiac arrest
than women, and cardiac arrest patients are
getting younger.
"The average age of a
patient admitted to the hospital for cardiac
arrest in the early 1990s was 68. The
average age dropped to 66.5 years old ten
years later," said Dubinsky.
Dubinsky says hospitals
need to make more resources available on
weekends to improve the likelihood people
with cardiac arrest who are admitted on the
weekend will survive.
The American Academy of
Neurology, an association of over 21,000
neurologists and neuroscience professionals,
is dedicated to improving patient care
through education and research.
A neurologist is a
doctor with specialized training in
diagnosing, treating and managing disorders
of the brain and nervous system such as
Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, multiple
sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and stroke.
For more information about the American
Academy of Neurology, visit
http://www.aan.com.
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