Cardiac Arrest More Deadly on Night Shift

If your heart stops in the hospital, you’re more likely to die if it happens late at night, a study has found. The study looked at more than 86,000 cardiac arrests in U.S. hospitals. About 20% of those who had a cardiac arrest on the day or evening shift survived and left the hospital. For the night shift, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., survival was only 15%. Hospitals have lower staffing at night. On the night shift, patients were more likely to be found too late to restart the heart with an electric shock. The Associated Press wrote about the study February 20. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.