Sudden cardiac arrest can strike anyone at any time. But in many cities people who suffer sudden cardiac arrest are up to 46 times more likely to die than those who experience cardiac arrest in Seattle and King County, Washington, or Rochester, Minnesota - an astonishing and completely preventable variance in survival rates. In "Resuscitate!", Mickey S. Eisenberg, an expert emergency medical services (EMS) director, identifies fifty factors associated with the likelihood of surviving cardiac arrest and lays out twenty-five specific steps involved in raising a community's cardiac arrest survival rate. He offers recommendations for immediate and long-term improvement of EMS services, with actions that can be taken at local and national levels. A community's response to sudden cardiac arrest reveals the effectiveness of its EMS system as a whole. A victim of sudden cardiac arrest needs immediate care, and management of that care is a gauge of the EMS system itself. Improved treatment of sudden cardiac arrest will benefit one who needs emergency care. This book will be valuable for EMS medical directors, administrators and supervisors, and personnel - paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers - as well as elected officials, health services administrators, and concerned citizens. In short, this book is for everyone who wants to learn what we can all do to help more people survive sudden cardiac arrest. For more than thirty years, Mickey S. Eisenberg, M.D., Ph.D., has played a leading role in developing King County, Washington's emergency response to cases of sudden cardiac arrest, a system recognized as among the very best in the nation. He is a professor of medicine at the University of Washington and serves as the medical director of King County Emergency Medical Services.