News Release

DOCTOR WRITES SECOND ARTICLE
ON CARDIAC ARREST STUDY

March 31, 2004 — UPMC Northwest’s physician director of emergency services has authored a second article analyzing data from a study involving 874 pre-hospital cardiac arrest patients in urban, suburban, and rural areas.

The second analysis by Rade Vukmir, MD, JD, published in the January 2004 issue of the Emergency Medicine Journal, found no correlation between patients’ historical factors (presenting complaint, medical history, presence of specific disease conditions, overall drug use) and outcomes. The secondary evaluation did, however, find that patients’ use of antiarrhythmic drugs contributed adversely to outcomes.

The conclusion of the second analysis: because there is little association between patients’ historical factors and outcomes, taking extensive pre-hospital histories may potentially delay care and transport of these patients, Dr. Vukmir writes.

Dr. Vukmir’s earlier article analyzing data from this same sample of patients was published in the September 2003 edition of the Journal of Women’s Health. That analysis concluded that male gender is associated with both increased incidence and worsened outcome in pre-hospital cardiac arrest.