**2. Materials and Methods**

Firstly, from all the accepted calls by the Voivodeship Ambulance Service, the calls in which the medical dispatcher found it necessary for intervention on-site were selected. For this type of study (survey), approval of the bioethics committee is not required. In the second stage, the analyzed interventions were narrowed down based on identification criteria, according to the International Classification of Diseases, ICD-10. The identifications made using the code I were selected, which covers cardiovascular diseases. Next, the information contained in the "Emergency ambulance dispatch order card" was imported into an Excel calculatory spreadsheet, and afterward, statistical analysis was conducted based on the licensed version of the STATISTICA 13 PL program (StatSoft, Cracow, Poland). The analyzed data was then split based on identification, the intervention site (urban; rural) as well as sex (male; female), and also the way the intervention was completed. In this work, we also present the time that passed from the moment the call was received to the time the Medical Emergency Team arrived at the site. In the statistical analysis, the Chi-square test was used, with the statistical significance threshold adopted at *p* < 0.05.

## **3. Results**

Based on the shared medical documentation, it was determined that interventions made by the Medical Emergency Team due to cardiovascular disease were 12.6% (26,672 cases) of all the completed interventions. The total number of all interventions in 2018 totaled 211,548. It can be observed that the large majority of interventions took place in urban areas (89.98%; 23,998 cases), whereas only 11.02% took place in rural areas (2674 cases). The three most common causes for interventions being made by the Medical Emergency Team included: primary hypertension—11,649 cases; stroke, not specified as hemorrhage or infarction—3740 cases; atrial fibrillation and flutter—2473 cases. In Table 1, the 10 most

common causes for the emergency interventions are presented, while less common causes are grouped under "other causes".


**Table 1.** The characteristics of the injuries to which a trip by a Medical Rescue Team was completed in 2018.

Afterward, how these interventions were concluded by the Medical Emergency Team was assessed. The most common decision was for the patient to be directly transported and received by the hospital emergency department or emergency room (totaling 16,465 cases, which is equal to 61.7% of all total cases). In turn, in the case of 8732 calls (29.18%), help was granted on-site of the intervention, without the need to continue diagnostics and treatment in hospital. The statistical assessment indicated the occurrence of statistical significance (Table 2).

**Table 2.** Reasons for medical interventions of the Voivodeship Emergency Medical Teams in Katowice in 2018.


In the last part, the time that passed between the call was received and the arrival of the Medical Emergency Team to the intervention site. The average arrival time to urban areas was 9 min and 12 s ± 3 min and 54 s, whereas in rural areas it was 11 min and 57 s ± 4 min and 32 s (*p* < 0.05).

## **4. Discussion**

Cardiovascular diseases constitute the first most common cause of death worldwide; the same tendency was also noted in Poland [18]. Due to this, they form a huge challenge for the Medical Services, Emergency Medical Services as well as for the state, whose primary responsibility is guaranteeing the correct functioning of the system in sudden life-threatening situations [19]. According to the knowledge of the authors, the comparison of the trip characteristics made by the Medical Emergency Team within the territory of the Silesian Voivodeship presented as part of this work is the first of this sort of analysis. This type of analysis seems fully reasonable, as they allow for the assessment of how the organized Emergency Medical Service is used by its users (reporters), and additionally the societal awareness about the purpose of the system itself. Moreover, it also indicates the further decisions made in the given situations, which allows for determining the strengths and weaknesses of the system, and therefore, gives the ability to improve the system further [12,20–22]. Furthermore, such analyses are a valuable resource for developing preventive programs, indicating the target recipient group, and thanks to this, there is the possibility to create a campaign that will be met with a positive societal response [23,24].

Based on the obtained data, it was determined that decidedly, more often cardiovascular diseases were identified in men more than in women. This indicates that risk factors predisposed to the appearance of cardiovascular disease do not differ in a significant way between men and women. Simultaneously, however, it is worth noting that individual factors may have different severity in affecting people of both sexes [25–28]. For example, diabetes contributes 6–7 times more often to the development of ischemic disease in women, whereas only 2–3 times in men [29,30]. The most common reported cardiologic problem was primary hypertension. In 65% of accepted cases, the decision was made that it was necessary to grant further specialist healthcare in the Hospital Emergency Ward. Whereas, in nearly 1/3 of cases the help was granted on-site. This suggests that the majority of primary hypertension cases could constitute a direct threat to the life and health of a person, and furthermore, shows that the decision and assessment made by the distributor were correct [13]. Indirectly, this may also indicate the ability that the distributor possesses throughout the initial interview, in collecting key information about the health state of the patient, as well as the ability of the person reporting the situation to describe it to ask for help [2,13]. A similar tendency was observed for the second most common cause for calls for the Medical Emergency Team, which is atrial fibrillation and flutter as well as heart failure, which constitutes the third most common cause for interventions being made by the Medical Emergency Team.

However, a key element of the Emergency Medical Service system is also the time taken between accepting a call by the distributor and the arrival of the Medical Emergency Team. According to the act currently in effect about the Emergency Medical Services in regions in which over 10,000 residents are located, the time of arrival for the Medical Emergency Team in urban areas should not be more than 8 min, whereas in rural areas it should not be longer than 15 min [2]. A significant fact also seems to be that in the period the act was being created, it was decided to move towards shortening the maximum allowed time for arrival. First, in the act from 2001, it was decided that a Medical Emergency Team should arrive in urban areas in 20 min and to rural areas in 30 min [1,2]. The changes that were made by the legislator between 2001 and 2006 aimed to use the so-called "golden hour" in the best way possible, as it could decide whether the victim survives or not [31]. The data obtained by us alongside the existing recommendations indicates a shorter than required time for arrival to the victim in urban areas at 9 min and 12 s ± 3 min and 54 s, whereas for rural areas the time taken is 11 min and 57 s ± 4 min and 32 s [2]. It can also

be determined that the average arrival time by the Voivodeship Ambulance Service in Katowice is close to the time noted by other teams, such as the Voivodeship Ambulance Service in Lublin which averaged out to be 8.55 ± 5.16 min [20], whereas in the Otwock county the average time was 9.39 ± 6.87 min [32].

### **5. Conclusions**

In conclusion, it can be observed that the Emergency Medical Services in Katowice function according to the intentions of the legislator. The obtained data also indicates a high societal awareness about the correct functioning and purpose of the Medical Emergency Team.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, K.N., J.R.Ł., and M.W.-S.; methodology, M.W.-S.; validation, J.R.Ł., and D.B.; formal analysis, B.O.G.; investigation, K.N., and M.W.-S.; resources, O.W.; data curation, A.O.; writing—original draft preparation, M.W.-S., D.B., B.O.G.; writing—review and editing, K.N., J.R.Ł.; supervision, K.N.; project administration, A.O. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The data used to support the findings of this study is included in the article. The data will not be shared due to the fact the third-party rights and commercial confidentiality.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Patient consent was waived due to the retrospective nature of the study and does not bear the characteristics of a medical experiment.

**Data Availability Statement:** Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, due to the retrospective nature of the study and does not bear the characteristics of a medical experiment (Decision of the Bioethical Committee of the University of Technology in Katowice, no. 5/2020).

**Acknowledgments:** We would like to thank Oskar Ogloszka for improving our work, checking and correcting the English.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

### **References**

