Emergency call processing and survival from out-of-hospital ventricular fibrillation

Our aim was to report the effect of the emergency call processing in the dispatching centre on survival from out-of-hospital ventricular fibrillation (VF). This retrospective cohort study was conducted in Helsinki Emergency Medical Services. All consecutive cases with out-of-hospital bystander witnessed VF of cardiac origin between 1 January 1997 and 31 December 2002 were included. Data were collected prospectively. Call processing times, call numbers per dispatcher and telephone guided cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) were studied. Discharge alive from hospital was used as primary end point. The study population consisted of 373 cases. Cardiac arrest (CA) was recognised in 296 cases (79.4%) by the dispatcher. Survival to discharge was 37.2% (110/296) if CA was recognised and 28.6% (22/77) if it was not recognised ( p = 0.1550). When the dispatcher handled 9 ( p = 0.0227). The mean time to dispatch a first responding unit (FRU) was 77.1 ± 44.3 s. Survival to discharge was 39.4% (65/165) when the FRU dispatching time was