The way in which ambulance services respond to heart attacks patients varies dramatically across the country, a former service boss has said.
Roger Thayne, previously chief executive of the Staffordshire Ambulance Service, suggests 2,500 lives are being lost due to poor emergency care.
Factors contributing towards these failings include slow response times, medical procedures at the scene and a lack of defibrillators.
He also claims that there are “frightening” variations between England’s 12 ambulance services, making it a “postcode lottery” for heart attack patients.
Statistics show that the top ambulance services may be attempting to resuscitate three and a half times as many heart attack patients than those at the bottom.
The worst performer was the East of England Ambulance Service, which recorded just 32 survivors from 514 resuscitation attempts (per million head of population). This represents a 6% survival rate.
Speaking about the data, Mr Thayne said: “It’s absolutely frightening and totally unnecessary. We have an NHS which should be as good in any part of the country, and we should not have a postcode lottery in terms of this very acute condition, the cardiac arrest.
“I estimate that we should be saving twice as many lives a year, or around 2,500 people.”
Cardiac arrest care
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