Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart begins beating in an uncontrolled, unsustainable fashion that does not allow for adequate circulation of blood to perfuse the brain or sustain life. One of the variables in OHCA is airway management. Many of the EMS protocols across the world put a heavy emphasis on endotracheal intubation as the mainstay of securing an airway. While a successful intubation is certainly the gold standard, it takes time and has a considerable failure rate in the pre-hospital environment.
This raises the question; In an adult patient who suffered an out of hospital cardiac arrest and who received cardiopulmonary resuscitation attempts from EMS providers (P), is prehospital placement of an advanced airway device (I) superior to the bag-valve-mask (C) when comparing rates of neurologically intact survival(O)
