Guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency cardiac care. Emergency Cardiac Care Committee and Subcommittees, American Heart Association. Part IX. Ensuring effectiveness of communitywide emergency cardiac care.

Cardiac arrest treatment continues to evolve. Adequate treatment of the individual patient requires that the whole ECC system function smoothly, consistently, and rapidly. To maximize communitywide survival rates, a careful evaluation of the entire chain of survival is required using standard measurements of performance. The challenge for the next decade is to establish this infrastructure and to conduct multicenter, prospective, controlled clinical trials to better define the key factors that will improve survival of cardiac arrest in every community.