What are the most common causes of in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) delay? What can be done to avoid it?
Bernd W. Böttiger, MD: The most common cause is probably that cardiac arrest is occurring on a “peripheral” [regular] ward and no one is witnessing that cardiac arrest. One of the steps towards better recognition of problems in our patients on “peripheral” wards and maybe also of cardiac arrest on “peripheral” wards would be some kind of telemetric supervision of their heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation. I know that many companies are working on these kinds of concepts right now.