Marjon Borgert

51 Emergency care for false arrests Table 2. Classi cations of the false arrests Urgent false arrests All the observed symptoms are present a Less urgent false arrests At least one of the observed symptomsare present a Systolic blood pressure pressure levels between 50-75 mmHg or not palpable palpable systolic blood pressure or levels ≥ 76 mmHg GCS b GCS < 9 GCS ≥ 9 Respiratory pattern assumed apnoea or gasping breathing normally or with e ort a Symptoms observed by hospital sta while activating the CAT b GCS: Glasgow Coma Scale Statistical analysis Continuous normally distributed variables were expressed by their mean and standard deviation or when not normally distributed as medians and their interquartile range (IQR). Categorical variables were expressed as percentages, numerators and denominators. Di erences between groups were tested by using the Student’s t-test and if continuous data was not normally distributed the Mann-Whitney U test was used. Categorical variables were compared with the chi-square test or Fisher’s exact tests when appropriate. Statistical signi cance was considered to be at p < 0.05. Statistical uncertaintywas expressed as 95%Con dence Intervals (CI). Data analysiswas performed with IBM SPSS version 20, inc., Chicago, IL. RESULTS Within the 3-year study period 405 CAT-activations were registered. In 74% (298/405) of these activations, the patients su ered from true cardiac arrests according to the Utstein guidelines. In 26% (107/405) the CAT was activated for FAs (Fig. 1). After analysing the CAT-activations for FAs, we found that 43% (46/107) of the FAs were urgent calls because of the severity of the observed symptoms. Less urgent calls were present in 57% (61/107) of the FAs (Fig. 1), di erence 14% (95% CI: 1% to 26%). The median age of patients with an urgent FA was 67 years (IQR 50-76) and in the less urgent group a median age of 62 years (IQR 45-71) was found, p =0.085 (Table 3). The median time the CAT spent at urgent calls was 27 minutes (IQR 13-41) versus 20 minutes (IQR 10-30) at less urgent calls, p =0.072.