Areas of Australia in need of education about cardiac arrest revealed

Researchers have identified high rates of cardiac arrest and low rates of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in regions of Australia, prompting calls for targeted education campaigns to raise awareness about avoiding and treating heart disease. There is.

A Monash University-led project has identified regions of Australia with high rates of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and low rates of bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).The research will be published in a journal pro swan.

Cardiac arrest, which means the heart stops beating, is not a heart attack. A heart attack can cause cardiac arrest, but not all cardiac arrests are related to a heart attack.

Approximately 26,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur in Australia each year, and only 12% of patients treated by ambulance survive to hospital discharge, 30 days, or both.

Lead author Professor Janet Bray, from Monash University's School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and Curtin University's Pre-Hospital, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine Research Unit, said survival in cardiac arrest depends on a series of interventions known as the 'chain of survival'. Stated.

“Early bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation is one of the most important of these interventions,” Professor Bray said. “If bystanders perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), survival rates double.”

This retrospective observational study used data from the Aus-ROC Australia and New Zealand OHCA Registry to map OHCA by local government area (LGA) from 2017 to 2019. Mathematical models and mapping techniques were applied to estimate witness incidence and bystander CPR ability rates. Events in each LGA.

High-risk municipalities were those with incident rates above the 75th percentile for their state or territory and bystander CPR rates below the 25th percentile for their state or territory. A total of 62,579 OHCA cases were transported by ambulance in 543 local governments across the country.

Sixty high-risk local authorities were identified, primarily in New South Wales, with a total population of 1.17 million people. With the exception of two in Adelaide and two in Perth, they were typically located in regional or remote areas.

Nationally, OHCA rates across municipalities ranged from 58.5 to 198.3 per 100,000 population, and bystander CPR rates ranged from 45 to 75%.

Professor Bray said the results show that OHCA rates and bystander CPR rates vary significantly across local authorities in Australia, and point to the importance of targeted education campaigns in high-risk areas. He said that

A previous Aus-ROC study with Ambulance Victoria found that regions of Victoria with high rates of OHCA had a high incidence of cardiovascular risk factors such as older age, lower socio-economic status and education, and higher rates of smoking. It was found that there is a population with a high proportion.

The incidence of OHCA decreased during the Heart Foundation's Heart Attack Warning Signs campaign. This suggests that cardiac arrest can be avoided if people act quickly when they feel heart attack symptoms such as chest pain.

“In areas where bystander CPR was high, uptake of CPR training was higher,” Professor Bray said. “Victoria Ambulance and Heart Foundation has been providing community education in these areas with our Heart Safe Communities Initiative. This series of efforts shows us that public education can improve OHCA outcomes. This means we can now target public education in areas where the problem is currently the greatest need across Australia.

“Many high-risk areas are in rural and remote areas. We are currently completing research in New South Wales to explore the best community-based approaches to improve OHCA outcomes in communities. , Victoria is running a pilot to teach high school students how to “save lives.” ”

Although similar analyzes have been conducted of regional OHCA variation in Queensland and Victoria, this is the first study to apply these methods to all Australian states and territories.

The organizations involved included Monash University, Curtin University, Queensland University of Technology, Auckland University of Technology, Queensland Ambulance Service, St John Western Australia, NSW Ambulance, Victoria Ambulance, SA Ambulance Service, St John Ambulance NT, ACT Ambulance; Includes Tasmanian Ambulance.