Paramedic 2: Adrenaline trial

Background

For more than 50 years, adrenaline has been given by healthcare professionals in attempts to revive people who have died unexpectedly. This was recommended practice, although no proof ever existed that it could make recovery more likely. In recent years, many studies have suggested that the practice is not helpful, and may even increase risk. The feeling now is that stopping its routine use may be the right thing to do, but we do not know this for sure.

Only what is called a ‘randomised trial’ can prove this one way or another. Leaders of the major advisory bodies have called for this to be done. The London Ambulance Service is one of five services in the United Kingdom to answer this call; we believe our patients would expect us to play our part in finding out what is safe and what is not.

The PARAMEDIC-2 trial, led by the University of Warwick, aims to improve the outcomes for patients suffering a cardiac arrest outside of the hospital environment.

Of the 30,000 people who have a cardiac arrest each year, national figures show no more than seven per cent survive to hospital discharge.

This study has now finished recruiting patients, having achieved its target of recruiting 8,000 patients in October 2017. The trial team are still in the process of following up with surviving patients and we anticipate early results from the trial will be published in 2018.

More information

This project is funded by the National Institute for Health Research’s Health Technology Assessment programme (project number 12/127/126) and co-ordinated by the University of Warwick, has received Research Ethics Committee approval and Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) approval.

For more information please find a Frequently Asked Questions document please visit the University of Warwick website.

The views and opinions expressed therein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Health Technology Assessment Programme, NIHR, NHS or the Department of Health.