Resumen

FITZ MAURICE, MARIO D et al. Sudden death in the prehospital setting in times of COVID-19. Rev. argent. cardiol. [online]. 2020, vol.88, n.3, pp.247-252. ISSN 1850-3748.  http://dx.doi.org/10.7775/rac.es.v88.i3.18015.

One in five adult deaths in developed countries is due to cardiovascular causes; half of these deaths occur suddenly and a large percentage in the out-of-hospital setting. Multiple studies demonstrated that the access of the general population to learning simple and pragmatic cardiopulmonary resuscitation maneuvers and the presence of automatic external defibrillator translates into a large increase in survival without sequelae in victims of sudden out-of-hospital sudden cardiac death. Today there is a situation represented by the pandemic by COVID -19, which questions what we have learned to date and makes us face two extremely complex situations. On the one hand, the cardiovascular involvement and the consequent increase in malignant ventricular arrhythmias generated by this infection, both in patients with previous pathologies or not, has shown an increase in the incidence of episodes of sudden out-of-hospital death. On the other hand, it forces us to rethink all the actions put into place at the moment that a patient presents with an episode of sudden out-of-hospital sudden cardiac death since now the possibility of transmission of this highly contagious disease is added during resuscitation maneuvers. Refinding a risk-benefit balance that allows increasing the patient’s survival with the least possible risk for the person who is resuscitating is the real challenge we are facing today.

Palabras clave : Death, Sudden, Cardiac; Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation; Defibrillators; Ventricular Fibrillation; Tachycardia, Ventricular; Coronavirus Infections; COVID-19.

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