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Cardiac arrest

Critical care poorly aligned with OHCA need in England

Geographical alignment of prehospital critical care services with population need for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients
Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine · Added 27 July 2026

Prehospital critical care is associated with improved outcomes following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), but may not be distributed equitably.

Study type
Registry
Design
Retrospective registry-based spatial analysis of three ambulance regions
Participants
All OHCAs 2018–2023 across three English ambulance services (total not reported)
Main finding
52.9% of population and 51.3% of OHCAs within 15 min of prehospital critical care; increasing response time associated with higher odds of high-risk, deprived neighbourhoods; only the service with an urban NHS car asset showed favourable alignment.
Caveat
Modelled response times and observational neighbourhood-level analysis; English setting.
Bottom line
Context only

Learning goal

Recognise how unequal distribution of prehospital critical care resources affects cardiac arrest outcomes in disadvantaged communities.

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