Learning CPR within the past year, the 10% estimate sounds similar to what i was taught, although we were also taught that the main difference is the length of time until CPR and defibrillation are applied. I can't find any of those outcome numbers in my classroom texts, so here's what Wikipedia summarizes: link. One or Two percent is about right, when there's no bystander nearby to give CPR or (especially) defibrillate. With immediate access to medical treatment survival to discharge can be 20 or 30%. Regardless, it is true that anybody who goes into cardiac arrest is more likely to die than to survive. The citations on Wikipedia point to multiple countries so i don't know how much any numbers may apply to various regions.
The author of "How Doctors Die" states: "I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one... walked out of the hospital." That does seem unusually low.
That does seem unusually low.
Only if you assume "didn't walk out of the hospital" means "didn't survive until discharge". I assumed he meant that most of those people never fully recovered, left in a wheelchair, or spent the rest of their lives in a nursing home.
I'm reposting this from HN's front page, because it brought up a non-cached thought on cryonics:
In short, end-of-life medical care is often pointless, painful and costly; doctors and ER personnel know this so well that they go to great lengths to ensure it doesn't happen to them.
It seems as if our systems and conventions around end of life are designed to not let people have a say in how they spend their final moments, even when letting them have their way would result in significant savings (note the dollar figures quoted above). I've already speculated on why that might be, but I keep seeing that turn up in unexpected ways.
I suspect that this is the bigger obstacle to cryonics, not so much e.g. the lack of scientific proof. "Freeze me cheaply instead of spending insane amounts of money on brutal attempts at keeping me alive" sounds like a sensible thing to tattoo on your chest, but the evidence suggests that it wouldn't be honored any more than "DNR" tattoos.