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Daily scan
Paramedic research, 8 October 2026
8 new paramedic and prehospital papers from the 8 October 2026 scan.
Listen to the 8 October 2026 podcast episode
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Amiodarone after non-shockable-to-shockable conversion
German Resuscitation Registry propensity-matched cohort testing whether amiodarone helps OHCA patients whose initial non-shockable rhythm converts to shockable — it was associated with better 24-hour and survival-to-discharge, though not clearly better neurological outcome.
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Long resuscitations don't rule out good recovery
Danish national registry study of bystander-witnessed OHCA survivors asking whether longer time-to-ROSC means worse long-term outcomes — anoxic brain damage rose with time, but long-term survival, return to work and nursing-home admission did not, showing prolonged resuscitation doesn't preclude good recovery.
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Family CPR helps — but strangers' CPR helps more
US CARES registry cohort of 824,960 OHCAs comparing family-member vs non-family bystander CPR — both beat no bystander CPR, but bystanders outside the family achieved notably higher survival.
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Bystander AEDs work — when someone actually grabs one
Korean multicentre OHCA registry analysis estimating bystander AED effectiveness against a no-defibrillation reference — AED application was associated with outcomes comparable to or better than EMS shocks, but was applied in only a fraction of eligible cases, especially at home.
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Only a third of arrests get bystander CPR
Systematic review and meta-analysis of 229 studies quantifying global bystander CPR rates in OHCA — just under a third of patients get bystander CPR, with arrests at home 28% less likely to receive it than public-location arrests.
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Age-adjusted MAP centiles for sick kids
Large US observational study deriving and validating age-specific mean arterial pressure centile curves in prehospital, ED and critical-care datasets — lower age-adjusted MAP tracked with mortality and greater vasoactive and fluid use, though the curves fitted neonates in the EMS sample poorly.
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Defibrillation strategy RCT gets underway
Protocol for a multinational 3-arm RCT testing whether anterior-posterior pad placement or double sequential defibrillation beats standard anterior-lateral defibrillation for 30-day survival in shockable OHCA — no results yet, with 320 of a planned 909 patients enrolled.
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TANGO2: compression-only vs standard bystander CPR
Protocol for TANGO2, a Swedish-Italian dispatcher-randomised non-inferiority trial testing whether bystander compression-only CPR is non-inferior to standard CPR for 30-day survival in ~3,260 dispatch-assisted OHCA patients.