Impact of different waves of COVID-19 on emergency medical services and out-of-hospital cardiopulmonary arrest in Madrid, Spain

Abstract

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is one of the three leading causes of death in industrialized countries.[1,2] Some studies have described the impact of the first COVID-19 pandemic wave in terms of the number of cases and OHCA survival rates in various regions,[3-5] but few have addressed the relationship between the successive phases and how they affected OHCA.[6,7] The 14-d cumulative incidence peaked at more than 990 cases, with these rates remaining above 200 for an eight-month period between 15 March 2020 and 15 March 2021 in Madrid, Spain. The objectives of the current study were twofold. First, we sought to describe how the different waves in the first pandemic year aff ected the healthcare activity of the Spanish emergency medical services (EMS). Second, we compared effects of the pandemic year on OHCA care to those of the preceding non-pandemic year in terms of initiating cardiopulmonary resuscitation and survival in a community with a high incidence of COVID-19.