[Epidemiology: Data from France and USA].

Epidemiological data on the incidence, the survival and the prognostic factors of cardiac arrest (CA) are often heterogeneous. However, recent advances in methodology and research have improved the knowledge on that topic. The generation of registries in United States and France, in particular, improved significantly the characterization and the transatlantic comparability of provided data. The main information of these registries confirmed the high incidence of cardiac arrest and highlighted an overall survival better than previous published. The assessment of characteristics of patients and pre- and in-hospital interventions supports the consistent influence of identified prognostic factors in United States and France as well. Advantages of these registries rely on the development of large database and quality of information. However, some data are limited by volunteering collection, incompletion and/or restriction on defined communities, avoiding any generalization. Nevertheless, these collections of data represent an outstanding resource for descriptive and analytic interpretation of outcome in cardiac arrest setting. They also represent a necessary source for origin of randomized clinical trials, representing solely the high level of evidence for application of management strategy.
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