Cardiac arrest calls in a general hospital.

All acute hospitals have a cardiac arrest team. A retrospective study of cardiac arrest calls prospectively recorded over a 24-month period was performed. 174 cardiac arrest calls were analyzed with 76 of these calls being false alarms. Only 16.5% of patients survived to discharge. Median age of patients suffering a cardiopulmonary arrest was 71.5 years (range 22-96 years) with an arrest occurring a median of 2 days post admission (range 0-83 days). A pilot study to determine physiological deterioration in the 24 hours prior to cardiac arrest was also performed. 45% of patients demonstrated a physiological deterioration over this time. Recommendations are made regarding the management of in-hospital cardiac arrests.