KUALA LUMPUR, March 28 — Only 8 per cent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) cases in Malaysia received further treatment at a hospital, according to a 2015 study.
Health Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa, in a written parliamentary reply last Thursday, cited Malaysia findings from the Pan Asian Resuscitation Outcomes Study (Paros) Clinical Research Network – involving the Ministry of Health (MOH) – published in 2015 in the Resuscitation medical journal.
The study recorded 389 OHCA cases from three data collection centres in Malaysia – the Klang Valley; Kota Bharu in Kelantan; and Penang – from January 2009 to December 2012, with 84.1 per cent thought to originate from the heart.
Nearly half (47 per cent) of the 389 OHCA cases had eyewitnesses, while 37.1 per cent had an unknown unshockable rhythm, which was recorded as the first arrest rhythm.
Additionally, only less than a quarter (22.6 per cent) received cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) intervention from bystanders, with 2.6 per cent receiving defibrillation and 12.7 per cent receiving adrenaline shots from prehospital response teams.
Only 8 per cent received further treatment in hospital.
Dr Zaliha was responding to a question by Ipoh Timor MP Howard Lee Chuan How, who asked the minister to provide the monthly percentage of OHCA cases that were attended to by the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) ambulance services, but where CPR was not administered, from January 2013 until December 2022.
“The Ministry of Health does not have figures on the monthly percentages of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases, since the database to monitor the prevalence and lifeline of OHCA cases in Malaysia has yet to be developed,” Dr Zaliha said in a written Dewan Rakyat reply last March 23.
On June 22 last year, CodeBlue published an article delving into the death of Kumaraveloo Terpari @ Thirupathy, a 43-year-old man who had collapsed in his car in Ipoh, Perak, while driving home from work.
His brother, Dr Thiru Terpari @ Thirupathy accused Ipoh general hospital’s ambulance service of allowing his brother to die from a heart attack, as Raja Permaisuri Bainun Hospital’s (HRPB) ambulance service withheld CPR from Kumaraveloo, despite reportedly arriving on the scene within 20 minutes from the emergency call.
An independent inquiry into the case involving experts from public hospitals and outside HRPB was held last July, but then-Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin never published the findings of the investigation or disclosed if similar lapses have occurred in other public ambulance services nationwide.
Last February 27, Deputy Health Minister Lukanisman Awang Sauni held that the MOH is improving the standard operating procedure (SOP) on CPR intervention provided by public ambulances in an effort to “avoid a repeat of past incidents”.
