Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in a mexican urban setting

There has not been much research around the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) system in Mexico, nevertheless, in comparison to a known framework such as the United States' (USA) Emergency Medical Services Act, some assumptions can be made: Around half the ambulance personnel in Mexico are volunteers, and most of them have basic emergency medical technician equivalent training, they have an average of 5 years of experience, few personnel has been formally educated at a tertiary educational institution. There is no unique number for EMS activation (such as 911 in USA ), there is not a homogeneous coverage during the different week days and times of the day, consumer participation and public education level is low, although there are standards for patient records the chief complaint is reported in 30.5% of the records. Few Quality improvement efforts are performed. Outcomes from these kinds of scenario have only been measured in Trauma patients, but the Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest model has never been used as a mean to assess the system. The central aspect of this Thesis is to assess the EMS system at an urban setting using data from out-of-hospital cardiac arrests based on the Utstein style framework. A prospective cohort study was done in the city of Queretaro, Mexico obtaining data from all the ambulance registries of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims treated from June 2006 to May 2007.