I have worked hundreds of heart attacks in the field, as a paramedic.
And I worked hundreds more in the ER, as my EMS was hospital based.
To an EMT this announcement is no big deal. The paramedics are working the code in the house. They have just as good a heart monitor and the same drugs as the ER.
If the EMTs administer drugs and have performed endotrachial intubation and oxygen, and defibrillate the patient 3 or 4 times, takes about 15 minutes, and if the heart has not restarted by then, the patient is dead. I have performed over 100 endotrachial intubations.
The chance of a recovery in the ER, after the code has been worked unsuccessfully in the field, is around zero.
We were not allowed to pronounce a patient dead so the hundreds of codes I worked at home, every single one was transported to the ER. Yes 8 or 10 of those were "saved." The heart began beating again in the ER. And the patient was taken up to ICU where they "lived" for another week, never regained consciousness [the brain was shot anyway] ran up a $200,000 hospital bill, and then they officially, and mercifully, died.
Of all those codes we worked in the field and then transported to the ER to get worked some more, none of them recovered to where they walked out of the hospital.
Us cynical medics sometimes thought that they worked those codes so hard in the ER only if the patient had good insurance so the hospital could run up a good ICU bill, prior to the trip to the graveyard.
We medics viewed CPR as "abuse of a corpse." Today, as a civilian, if I saw a 65 year old guy keel over at the grocery store and I felt for a pulse and there was none, I am going to keep my mouth shut and walk on by. His heart stopped because he has an old, diseased heart. He is dead.
If I saw a lineman get electrocuted, or if I saw a kid drown in the river, and the heart stopped, I would do CPR. This patient is young and has a healthy heart, CPR might possibly save them and return them to a normal life.
