[Attitude of general practitioners to treatment of their own cardiac arrests occurring outside hospital].

By means of an anonymous investigation, all 375 general practitioners in the County of Arhus were questioned about their attitudes to treatment of cardiac arrest occurring in themselves outside hospital. Treatment is undertaken in a heart ambulance (with DC-equipment but without qualified medical staff). In addition, they were questioned about therapeutic wishes if primary resuscitation with ventilation and cardiac massage were administered by a layman. The same question was repeated after the practitioners had read an up-to-date article about the results of treatment of cardiac arrest outside hospital. Finally, the practitioners were asked whether they consider that the remainder of the population should be treated as they wished. 81% of the practitioners replied to the questionnaires. The results are presented in tabular form. Reading of the article altered the replies given by the practitioners only to a limited extent. After reading of the article, 79.7% did not wish resuscitation if the total time interval from cardiac arrest to commencement of treatment by the ambulance staff was six minutes or more. This is significantly less than the average time interval in cases of ambulance turn out on account of cardiac arrest. Should the primary resuscitation be administered by a layman, 66.8% do not wish resuscitation by the ambulance staff in the same situation. 82.8% of the practitioners agreed that the population as a whole should have the same populations as themselves. 6.4% disagreed. On the basis of these results possible alterations in the current treatment for cardiac arrest outside hospital are discussed.