ABSTRACT
Cardiac arrest situations justifiably provoke a sense of urgency and drama for the attending staff. Seconds matter, as the length of time a patient suffers cardiac arrest clearly has a direct influence on outcome. Many cardiac arrest situations occur suddenly, without warning or obvious precipitant.1 On discovery of a patient in cardiac arrest, the process of emergency resuscitation begins, with a view to restoring cardiac output and systemic oxygenation, diagnosis of the underlying cause, and correction of any correctable contributing factors. Emergency echocardiography can play a pivotal role in the diagnostic component of the resuscitation process.2,3
In the hospital setting, cardiac arrest situations take several forms, which differ somewhat in the requirements for echocardiography. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, usually brought in by ambulance and paramedics under full cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), generally have prolonged resuscitation times prior to reaching the arrest team.4 These patients frequently are severely hypoxic and acidotic, especially if inadequate bystander CPR was undertaken. In these cases, echocardiography is often of limited value because of the very agonal stage of cardiac function at this late stage.
