[New approaches in first aid for cardiovascular patients]

Sudden cardiac arrest is a major problem of our society. Ventricular fibrillation strikes without any warning. It leads to unconsciousness and death occurs within minutes. Every year at least 100,000 people die from sudden cardiac arrest in Germany alone. The following article is concerned with how todays rescue system can be improved in order to increase survival rates. The time which passes between occurrence of the ventricular fibrillation and the therapeutic defibrillation plays a major role. It is being observed that decentralizing the rescue system is of great advantage. The idea of the "first responder", involving laymen, family members, and company paramedics, reduces the rescue time extraordinarily. The introduction of a digital emergency health record which provides the doctor with all the important data on the patient briefly seems to be of equal importance. Hereby, delays based on false information can be reduced to a minimum. Optimizing the equipment by means of implementing automatic procedures which enable the application by laymen is just as important. But the key to medical success appears to be educating and repeatedly training as many people as possible.