Report Shows Cardiac Survival Rates Are Low Across US

A report by the Institute of Medicine says survival rates for cardiac arrest are unacceptably low across the country.

The report found that less than 6 percent of people who undergo cardiac arrest outside of a hospital survive. The survival rate for those who undergo cardiac arrest within a hospital was around 24 percent.

In order to improve those numbers, the authors suggest that learning CPR become a graduation requirement for middle and high schoolers. The report also said the odds of getting a person’s heart beating could be improved if there were a national database to see what works best.

Milwaukee has tracked all EMS patients since 1976. Dr. Tom Aufderheide, a professor of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, said the record-keeping has helped.

“As a result, Milwaukee has the second-highest survival rate overall from cardiac arrest compared to Seattle,” he said.

Aufderheide was a member of the Institute of Medicine committee on cardiac arrest. He noted that cardiac arrest is often confused with a heart attack. Whereas heart attacks occur when blood flow to the heart is blocked, cardiac arrests are when a heart malfunctions and stops beating.

According to the report, “cardiac arrests outside of hospitals (unlike heart attacks) rarely have early warning signs and require immediate intervention to avoid death and disability.”