www.ipej.org 194 Original Article Early Outcomes of Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest after Early Defibrillation: a 24 Months Retrospective Analysis

Introduction: Cardiovascular disease remains the most common cause of death in the United States and most other Western nations. Among these deaths, sudden, out-of-hospital cardiac arrest claims approximately 1000 lives each day in the United States alone. Most of these cardiac arrests are due to ventricular fibrillation. Though highly reversible with the rapid application of a defibrillator, ventricular fibrillation is otherwise fatal within minutes, even whe