Cardiac arrest survival rates unchanged by new training program

A five-year, randomized controlled trial involving 60 counties in North Carolina found that a comprehensive emergency medical services and community-based education program failed to significantly improve survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients. The study, known as the RACE-CARS intervention, sought to increase bystander CPR and the use of automated external defibrillators, but researchers reported no major improvement in survival to hospital discharge with favorable brain function.

The results were presented on Nov. 8, 2026, at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in Chicago and published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine. The trial encompassed a population of over 8.5 million people, evaluating whether targeted community education could effectively boost intervention rates in emergency situations.

While the primary outcomes did not show a statistically significant improvement, exploratory data from the final year of the study provided a different perspective. Communities that participated in the education program experienced a 33% increase in the odds of receiving bystander CPR compared to those that did not, suggesting that long-term initiatives might eventually yield better results.

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest continues to be a major public health concern in the United States, with survival rates historically remaining near 10%. The findings from this trial align with other recent research presented at the same conference, including a study on smartphone-based volunteer alerting systems that also found no significant difference in bystander intervention compared to standard 911 dispatch protocols.