Researchers have found the Australian regions most in need of education about cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
The Monash University-led project, funded by the Heart Foundation and conducted by the Australian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium, identified regions with high incidence of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and low rates of bystander CPR.
Australia has about 26,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests annually, with only 12% of patients treated by ambulance surviving to hospital discharge or 30 days.
Senior author Professor Janet Bray, from Monash’s School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and Curtin University’s Prehospital, Resuscitation and Emergency Care Research Unit, said cardiac arrest survival depended on a series of interventions known as ‘The Chain of Survival.’
“Early bystander CPR is one of the most important of these interventions: survival is doubled when CPR is given by bystanders,” she said.
The retrospective, observational study (published in PLOS ONE) used data from the Aus-ROC Australian and New Zealand OHCA Registry to map OHCA by local government areas (LGAs) from 2017 to 2019, before applying mathematical models and mapping techniques to estimate incidence and bystander CPR ability rates for witnessed events in each area.
High-risk LGAs were those with an incidence rate greater than its state or territory’s 75th percentile and a bystander CPR rate less than the state or territory’s 25th percentile. A total of 62,579 OHCA cases attended by ambulance across 543 LGAs nationwide were included.
Professor Bray said the results showed that OHCA incidence and bystander CPR rates varied markedly across Australian LGAs, making targeted education campaigns in areas of high risk crucial.
“Sixty high-risk LGAs with a total population of 1.17 million were identified, mainly in New South Wales. They were typically in regional and remote areas, except for two in Adelaide and two in Perth,” she said.
“Nationally, the OHCA incidence rate across LGAs ranged from 58.5 to 198.3 per 100,000 people, while bystander CPR rates ranged from 45% to 75%.”
OHCA incidence fell during the Heart Foundation’s Warning Signs Campaign for heart attacks, which suggested that when people act quickly when having heart attack symptoms, such as chest pain, they could avert having cardiac arrest.
“What this whole body of work shows us is that we can improve OHCA outcomes with public education and we can now target public education in areas with the greatest need across the whole of Australia,” Professor Bray concluded.
While similar analysis has been conducted on regional OHCA variations across Queensland and Victoria, this is the first study to apply these methods across all Australian states and territories.
For a full list of LGAs and their risk status, click here.