Editorial

Each year, there are ≈200 000 cardiac arrests in hospital-ized patients in the United States1 and survival rates remain very poor. Article see p 1415 In this issue of Circulation, Kolte et al2 present new find-ings about regional variability in resuscitation rates and out-comes across the United States. The authors reviewed records of>800 000 in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) events from 2003 to 2011, and identified that cardiac arrest in hospital-ized patients was common with an incidence of 2.85/1000 admissions. Most notably, they reported significant variability in IHCA across states with a nearly 6-fold difference in inci-dence and 2-fold difference in outcomes. With this substantial variance across states, it is likely that the differences within states are even greater. These findings are disturbing and clearly signal that where you live and where you arrest matter.