The ROC is a group of investigators and EMS providers who study cardiac arrest and severe injury as these conditions cause many deaths. Experienced treatments for cardiac arrest and severe injury are being studied within the ROC because:

• The ROC will allow EMS providers to use these new approaches at the earliest possible moment.
• Medical experts believe the sooner these patients are treated, the better the outcomes.
• Doing research in cities and in rural areas will help us learn what works best in different settings.
• Research studies done at many sites take less time to complete, thus allowing trial results to more quickly guide future practice.
• Collecting information about the rate and outcome from severe injury and cardiac arrest will tell us how many patients with these conditions survive and return to live and work in their community.

Cardiac arrest and serious injury are important public health problems. Heart disease is the most common cause of death in North America. Over 180,000 treatable out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur each year. Over half of these victims have no warning. Nearly 95% of patients who have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest die before reaching the hospital. If survival could be raised from 5% to 20%, an additional 27,000 deaths would be prevented yearly.

Life-threatening sever injury is the leading cause of death in North America for persons between the ages of 1 and 44 years, and one of the leading causes of death in those over 65 years. Approximately 175,000 injury-related deaths occur each year in North America. New drugs, tools and techniques have the potential to significantly improve the outcomes of people with these medical conditions.