Sudden cardiac death remains one of the leading causes of mortality. Additionally, quality of life is often impaired even if the respective patients are successfully resuscitated. The so-called chain of survival has been promoted publicly and via guidelines and recommendations, emphasizing early recognition and therapy of cardiac arrest, but also optimized prevention strategies - it always takes a functioning system to save a life. Advances have been made in the field in recent years, for instance introducing first responder systems or futuristic approaches like drones delivering automated external defibrillators. However, a comprehensive assessment of the conducted interventions and introduced systems is still ongoing.
While improvements in the chain of survival are an often-cited goal, and guidelines and recommendations formulate knowledge gaps to be filled, an assessment of the changes already started or implemented is still needed. A ‘personalized’ approach may be warranted, not only for the individual patient, but also for individual regions, systems, and circumstances. Is a first responder system including the fire brigade a one-size fits all approach? Should we invest funding in a defibrillator drone fleet? How about low-resource settings? ‘’Further research is needed’’ can be read in many discussions and conclusions of literature of this topic - this Research Topic should provide the possibility to collect this ‘further research’ and facilitate a view on the latest findings.
Authors are invited to submit research on the prevention and therapy of sudden cardiac death. Articles could cover various aspects of the chain of survival as described above. Assessments of already-implemented system changes and evaluations of individualized approaches are strongly encouraged.
Sudden cardiac death remains one of the leading causes of mortality. Additionally, quality of life is often impaired even if the respective patients are successfully resuscitated. The so-called chain of survival has been promoted publicly and via guidelines and recommendations, emphasizing early recognition and therapy of cardiac arrest, but also optimized prevention strategies - it always takes a functioning system to save a life. Advances have been made in the field in recent years, for instance introducing first responder systems or futuristic approaches like drones delivering automated external defibrillators. However, a comprehensive assessment of the conducted interventions and introduced systems is still ongoing.
While improvements in the chain of survival are an often-cited goal, and guidelines and recommendations formulate knowledge gaps to be filled, an assessment of the changes already started or implemented is still needed. A ‘personalized’ approach may be warranted, not only for the individual patient, but also for individual regions, systems, and circumstances. Is a first responder system including the fire brigade a one-size fits all approach? Should we invest funding in a defibrillator drone fleet? How about low-resource settings? ‘’Further research is needed’’ can be read in many discussions and conclusions of literature of this topic - this Research Topic should provide the possibility to collect this ‘further research’ and facilitate a view on the latest findings.
Authors are invited to submit research on the prevention and therapy of sudden cardiac death. Articles could cover various aspects of the chain of survival as described above. Assessments of already-implemented system changes and evaluations of individualized approaches are strongly encouraged.
