Paramedic Papers

Home Cardiac arrest Critical care transport better in interfacility OHCA

Cardiac arrest

Critical care transport better in interfacility OHCA

Cardiac Arrest During Interfacility Transport with Emergency Medical Services: A Preliminary Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study
Prehospital Emergency Care · Added 27 July 2026

Using a large nationwide sample of OHCA incidents that occurred during IFT, we found that higher level of EMS care was associated with superior short-term outcomes while controlling for other key factors.

Study type
Registry
Design
Retrospective nationwide registry cross-sectional study
Participants
1,466 OHCA incidents during interfacility transport
Main finding
Sustained ROSC at end of transport in 50.3%; critical care transport (aOR 2.21, 95% CI 1.42-3.48) and shockable rhythm (aOR 3.86, 95% CI 2.42-6.36) associated with better ROSC, while BLS care (aOR 0.45, 95% CI 0.22-0.90), geriatric age (aOR 0.64, 95% CI 0.44-0.94) and ground transport (aOR 0.58, 95% CI 0.38-0.89) were worse; CCT vs ALS also better in unshockable rhythm subgroup (aOR 2.65, 95% CI 1.64-4.33)
Caveat
Observational design with confounding by indication — sicker patients may have been triaged to critical care transport
Bottom line
Hypothesis-generating

Learning goal

Weigh the impact of critical care transport levels on outcomes during interfacility transfer of patients in cardiac arrest.

Open in dashboard Read the paper (DOI) PubMed

More

Related papers on Cardiac arrest