These researchers examined data from 6,789 patients who had cardiac arrest due to ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia at 369 hospitals participating in the National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, to determine the prevalence of delayed defibrillation (>2 minutes) in the US and its effect on survival. The overall median time to defibrillation was 1 minute; delayed defibrillation occurred in 2,045 patients (30.1%). Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified the following characteristics as being associated with delayed defibrillation; Black race, noncardiac admitting diagnosis, and occurrence of cardiac arrest at a hospital with <250 beds, in an unmonitored hospital unit, and during after-hours periods (5 p.m. to 8 a.m. or weekends). After adjusting for differences in patient and hospital characteristics, significantly fewer patients survived to hospital discharge when defibrillation was delayed than when it was not (22.2% vs 39.3%). In addition, a graded association was seen between increasing time to defibrillation and lower rates of survival to hospital discharge for each minute of delay (p for trend <0.001).
