Scottish Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest data linkage project: 2018-2019 results

Number of OHCA Survivors per million of the population

A useful method of describing survival after OHCA is to measure the number of 30 day survivors per million of the population. The advantage of this approach is that it gives an indicator which is unaffected by the percentage of all arrests attended by the Emergency Services which are ‘worked’. Variation in the worked arrest percentage can skew the denominator when calculating the more traditional figure of the percentage survival to 30 days. National population figures for our calculation are derived from Mid-Year Population estimates from National Records of Scotland.

Figure 11 shows the 30 day survival per million of the population and reported bystander CPR rates for all worked arrests from 2011/12 - 2018/19.

Table 2: 30 day survival per million population

Mid-Year Population estimates from National Records of Scotland and based on estimates of population at the middle of the year e.g. 2011/12 - population is at June 2011.

Figure 11: Number of 30 day survivors after OHCA per million of the population

Figure 11: Shows the number of 30 day survivors per million of the population, 2011/12 to 2018/19 (red line). Columns show the absolute number of lives saved with the lower section of each showing baseline number of 30 day survivors in 2012, middle sections representing additional lives saved after the start of initial improvement work and the top section showing the impact of the OHCA Strategy launch in March 2015.