ArticleResuscitation plus2024
Response times in rural areas for emergency medical services, fire and rescue services and voluntary first responders during out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.
Article in Resuscitation plus, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Barriers and facilitators while implementing community first responder systems in a western setting: mixed-methods expert consensus.International journal of emergency medicine · 2026Review
- Comparing the incomparable: Population densities and first responder groups through alternate statistics.Resuscitation plus · 2025Review
- Trends and Disparities in Appendicitis-Related Mortality Across U.S. Demographics and Regions: A 22-Year CDC WONDER Database Study.World journal of surgery · 2025Article
- Trends in Sudden Cardiac Death Related Mortality in Adults in the United States: A CDC WONDER Database Analysis, 1999-2020.Clinical cardiology · 2025Article
- Defining the terminology of first responders alerted for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest by medical dispatch centres: An international consensus study on nomenclature.Resuscitation plus · 2025Article
- Isolated emergency medical incidents in the practice of Polish firefighters in 2020-2023: analysis of intervention causes.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Voluntary first responders' experiences of being dispatched to suspected out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in rural areas: an interview study.BMC cardiovascular disorders · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Aim: To increase survival in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA), great efforts are made to improve the number of voluntary first responders (VFR). However, evidence of the potential utility of such efforts is sparse, especially in rural areas. Therefore, the aim was to describe and compare response times for emergency medical services (EMS), fire and rescue services (FRS), and VFR during OHCA in relation to population density. Methods: This observational and comparative study was based on data including positions and time stamps for VFR and response times for EMS and FRS in a region in southern Sweden. Results: In total, 285 OHCAs between 1 July 2020 and 31 December 2021 were analysed. VFR had the shortest median response time in comparison to EMS and FRS in all studied population densities. The overall median (Q1-Q3) time gain for VFR was 03:07 (01:39-05:41) minutes. A small proportion (19.2%) of alerted VFR accepted the assignments. This is most problematic in rural and sub-rural areas, where there were low numbers of alerted VFR. Also, FRS had shorter response time than EMS in all studied population densities except in urban areas. Conclusion: The differences found in median response times between rural and urban areas are worrisome from an equality perspective. More focus should be placed on recruiting VFR, especially in rural areas since VFR can potentially contribute to saving more lives. Also, since FRS has a shorter response time than EMS in rural, sub-rural, and sub-urban areas, FRS should be dispatched more frequently.
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Registered trials
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