Purpose of the study
To investigate characteristics of patients suffering out-of–hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in two cities with different demographic features.

Materials and methods
All OHCA cases treated with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) by the Emergency Medical System (EMS) in the districts of Udine and Trieste (FVG, Italy) from 01/01/2013 to 31/12/2014 were retrospectively included. Differences between the two communities and the EMSs are showed in Tables 1 and 2. Fisher’s t test or chi-squared test were used to analyse comparisons. A P value of < 0.05 was considered significant.

Results
Differences between the two areas were found in the number of patients with an initial shockable rhythm, in the rescue time and in the CPR duration. Moreover, statistically significant differences were recorded overall in the reasons for dispatching after the emergency telephone calls, in the priority colour code assigned by the dispatcher and in the initial rhythm of patients.

Conclusions
Survival rates from OHCAs were generally poor and there were no differences between the two cities. However, in Trieste there were more shockable rhythms. As there is no difference in terms of OHCA patients’ age between the two cities, we assume that CPR was not performed in very elderly people in Trieste. In spite of a major number of vehicles available on day and night, rescue time was longer in Trieste, probably reflecting the complexity of a city road system.

8 - Out of hospital cardiac arrest: anything new from aging cities?