Rapid response team
Report
|Updated
A rapid summary of evidence supporting rapid response team or similar interventions to prevent in hospital hearth attack and mortality.
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Key message
Background
A national patient safety campaign, planned to start in 2011, is being prepared. To support decisions regarding the choice of priority areas and interventions, we have performed a rapid summary of evidence supporting rapid response team or similar interventions to prevent in hospital hearth attack and mortality.
Commission
The summary was performed on commission of The Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, The secretary of the patient safety campaign 2011.
Main conclusions (graded body of evidence)
- There is no convincing evidence supporting that the introduction of rapid response teams in it self leads to a reduction of cardiac arrests or deaths in hospitals.
- A larger Australian cluster randomised trial involving 23 hospitals revealed no significant reduction in neither cardiac arrest nor unexpected mortality (medium quality evidence) in hospitals with medical emergency teams. A smaller British trial with a pragmatic ward randomisation design revealed a reduction in overall mortality (low quality evidence) in wards that had introduced critical care outreach. Ten and nine observational studies, respectively revealed a reduction in cardiac arrests, but variable results regarding reduction in mortality (very low quality evidence).
The conclusion was based on results of studies in a new systematic review.