Journal of Acute Disease (Jan 2013)

Comparison of use and role of adrenaline and amiodarone in cardiac arrest: Case of emergency center in Kosovo

  • Basri Lenjani,
  • Nehat Baftiu,
  • Ilaz Bunjaku,
  • Kadir Hyseni,
  • Arianit Jakupi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/S2221-6189(13)60108-0
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 2
pp. 106 – 108

Abstract

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Objective: To investigate application of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) measures within the golden minutes in Europe. Methods: The collected data belong to the patients with cardiac arrest that have been recorded in patients' protocol logbook at the Emergency Clinic. During the 2010-2011 in the Emergency Center of the CUCK in Prishtina have been treated a total of 269 patients with cardiac arrest, of whom 159 or 59.1% have been treated in 2010, and 110 patients or 40.9% in 2011. Cardiac arrest cases were present during all days of the week, but most frequently cases have been reported on Monday with 32.0% of cases, and on Friday with 24.5% of cases. All patients with cardiac arrest have been treated with physiological solution. Results: In 245 or 91.1% patients adrenaline has been applied; in 64 or 23.8% amiodarone has been applied; in 12 or 4.5% cases atropine has been applied, 11 or 4.1% of cases were treated with NaHCO3; 7 or 2.6% of cases were treated with lidocaine; and 6 or 2.2% of cases were treated with dopamine. All survivors from cardiac arrest have received appropriate medical assistance within 10 minutes from attack, which implies that if cardiac arrest occurs near an health care institution (with an opportunity to provide the emergent health care) the rate of survival is higher. Conclusions: Anti-arrhythmic drugs as with vasopressors, the evidence that anti-arrhythmic drugs are of benefit in cardiac is limited. No anti-arrhythmic drug given during human cardiac arrest has been shown to increase survival to hospital discharge, although amiodarone has been shown to increase survival to hospital admission after shock-refractory VF/VT. There are no data on the use of amiodarone for shock-refractory VF/VT when single shocks are used. Despite the lack of human long-term outcome data, the balance of evidence is in favour of the use of some anti-arrhythmic drugs for the management of arrhythmias in cardiac arrest.

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