National Survival Strategy for Circulatory Arrest

AED within 5 minutes

Every year, around 8500 people in Switzerland suffer a sudden circulatory arrest. That is approximately every thousandth inhabitant. Around two thirds of these emergency situations occur in the home environment. Worldwide, only every tenth person affected survives such an event.

As these chances of survival can be significantly increased, various expert organisations have now adopted a national survival strategy for circulatory arrest for the first time under the umbrella of the Swiss Resuscitation Council SRC.

In Switzerland, in the event of circulatory arrest, every affected person receives the optimal care to survive with the best possible quality.

The "National Survival Strategy for Circulatory Arrest" is a science-oriented and at the same time practical instrument that aims to guide the activities of the various implementation partners involved in an appropriate manner and to lead to the best possible outcome. The aim is to increase the chances of survival with a good neurological outcome in sudden and premature circulatory arrest.

The strategy does not address circulatory arrests that lead to death at the end of life or as a result of a pre-existing serious illness.

The national survival strategy is based on a similar concept of the Scottish government, in which the strategic goals are presented using the chain of survival. In contrast to the Scottish approach, the present document targets not only out-of-hospital but also in-hospital circulatory arrests and extends the chain of survival to include event prevention. The involvement of the implementation partners involved is central.

The structure is divided into seven categories:

The strategic goals for out-of-hospital resuscitations are named under "Out-of-hospital circulatory arrest". The strategic goals for resuscitations within the hospital follow in the section "In-hospital circulatory arrest".

The "desired degree of achievement" quantifies which degree of goal achievement seems desirable and possible from a systemic perspective.

To achieve the goals, "possible measures" are outlined and "measurement criteria" as well as measurement instruments or data sources are proposed. With the instruments available today, it is often not yet possible to measure all these degrees of achievement, which can be understood as an incentive to develop the appropriate measurement criteria and instruments.

These are to be worked on by the "possible stakeholders", who deal with the respective goals in a differentiated way due to interest, responsibility and/or expertise, and are to be brought into the further development of the strategy.

A. Avoid

B. Recognise

C. Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation

D. Defibrillation*

E. Advanced resuscitation measures

F. Post-resuscitation care

G. Aftercare

H. Culture and context

*Strategic defibrillation:

  • In the event of circulatory arrest, an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) is used within 5 minutes.
  • Target achievement level: 90%.
  • Defibrillators/AEDs are tactically positioned and signalled
  • The locations of the defibrillators/AEDs are documented in an accessible way for SNZ 144 and made known to the population