Structured Evaluation and Treatment of cardiac arrest via the ABCDE approach (SETA) - Rethinking high-performance CPR and cause-finding during Advanced Life Support.
Resuscitation plus · 2026-08-19 · Other / unclear
Abstract
The European Resuscitation Council (ERC) Guidelines 2025 continue to summarize the causes of cardiac arrest that should be sought during advanced life support (ALS) as "4Hs and 4Ts". While well established, this list-based mnemonic does not map onto the airway-breathing-circulation-disability-exposure (ABCDE) sequence that emergency teams use for every other patient assessment, and it excludes causes that are clinically treatable but not classically "reversible" in the prehospital phase. We present SETA (Structured Evaluation and Treatment of cardiac arrest via the ABCDE approach), a concept developed within the Emergency Medical Service Vienna that restructures both cause-finding during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and evaluation of high-performance CPR around the ABCDE sequence, embeds protocol-linked actions at each step, and is designed to run within ongoing chest compressions without interrupting them. We outline its rationale, its relationship to existing pit-crew and ABCDE-based resuscitation models, and the prospective evaluation now needed before considered for wider use.