More than 1600 people die of a cardiac arrests outside of hospital in New Zealand every year.

Over the last 2017/18 year, St John has treated more than 2000 people who have suffered a cardiac arrest, which equates to about five people per day.

The information is part of the fifth St John Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Registry report, which casts fresh light on who these people are, who is most at risk and why, as well as those most likely to survive.

The report has revealed geography as a key feature, with the upper North Island having the greatest number of cardiac arrests as well as the biggest population base.

The information gathered in the report is significant as survival rates are a key benchmark of the clinical quality of an Emergency Ambulance Service and worldwide, rates of survival are low.

Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest data therefore is used to identify and improve clinical care and survival outcomes.

The OHCA report suggests St John NZ's cardiac arrest survival rate of 13 per cent compares well against other emergency ambulance services including Ambulance Victoria (11 per cent); London Ambulance Service (10 per cent); St John Western Australia (11 per cent); and the King County EMS, USA (20 per cent).

'The biggest inroad we can make to NZ's cardiac arrest survival rate is to dramatically increase the public's use of AEDs (Automated External Defibrillators) along with CPR,” says St John Medical Director Dr Tony Smith.

'Over the last five years, bystander use of AEDs has grown from 3.9 per cent in 2013 to 5.1 per cent. With public awareness campaigns and the introduction of the GoodSAM app we want to see this number grow further.

'If you can use a mobile phone, you can use an AED.”

Dr Smith attributes this year's positive result to the introduction of the GoodSAM app in April 2018 along with the implementation of double crewed ambulances and participation in the global Restart a Heart Day in October 2018.

He says when a heart stops beating, every minute counts and the OHCA report shows New Zealanders are far more likely to step up and try to help people in cardiac arrest than people in other countries.

It shows a considerable number of those experiencing a cardiac arrest received help from a bystander (74 per cent received CPR and 5.1 per cent received defibrillation).

'This is critical because for every minute without CPR or defibrillation, the survival rate drops by 10 per cent.

'On average in urban areas, it took six minutes for an emergency vehicle to reach a patient and nine minutes to reach those living in rural and remote communities.

'We are grateful to Fire and Emergency New Zealand who co-responded to 84 per cent of all cardiac events with St John. Critical response times have improved since the first Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest report was collated in 2013/14 when the average for urban areas was eight minutes, while in rural and remote areas the average fell from 11 minutes.

'St John continues to use OHCA findings to look at how we work to improve survival rates including how we address the equity and access issues highlighted by the report data.”

The OHCA report has also shown people in the least deprived areas have a higher survival rate than those in the most deprived areas.

Using a measure that is believed to be the first of its kind to correlate New Zealand's cardiac arrest rates with deprivation and ethnicity, this year's OHCA reports that people from the poorest communities are over-represented in this number.

Māori have both the highest rates of cardiac arrest and the lowest survival rates and Pacific peoples' also have higher cardiac arrest rates and lower survival than Europeans.

'In 2015, in response to the over-representation of Māori in the cardiac arrest rates, St John introduced the Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest AED in Marae programme supplying training and AEDs to several marae,” says Dr Smith.

'This programme has grown with St John gifting 50 additional AEDs year on year since then to selected marae and appropriate community facilities across the country. Since launching the initiative, 69 marae have received AEDs and more than 600 whānau members have completed the training.”

A free 3 Steps for Life programme has been set up to teach people how to perform CPR and is aimed at improving the survival rates of patients who suffer out of hospital cardiac arrest, most of which occur in the home.

Read the full report: St John Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Report 2017/18