b"KEY FINDINGS FROM THIS YEAR'S CARES DATA2024 DATASETIncidence and Demographics2024 DATASET AND INCIDENCE OF OHCA EVENTSThis report presents CARES data from the most recent calendar year, January 1 to December 31, 2024. To be included in the annual National Report, EMS agencies must enter at least one complete calendar year of data and meet a patient lost-to-follow-up threshold of less than 1%. The CARES 2024 National Reports are available for viewing at: https://mycares.net/sitepages/reports2024.jsp. The 2024 dataset includes 2,625 EMS Agencies and 2,208 Hospitals, and represents a population of 174.1 million, approximately 52% of the U.S. population. In 2024, 137,119 OHCA events were reported to CARES. The crude incidence of non-traumatic, worked arrests was 78.7 per 100,000, slightly lower than the incidence rate of 88.8 per 100,000 observed in 2023. Using census data to extrapolate to the U.S. population 1 , CARES estimates that there were approximately 263,711 EMS-treated, non-traumatic OHCA cases in the United States last year.DEMOGRAPHICSIn 2024, the majority of CARES patients were male (63.2%). Of the reported OHCA events, 97.3% (n=133,434) were adults and 2.7% (n=3,959) were children, aged 18 years and younger. The median age of OHCA patients was 66.0 years (mean: 63.1; standard deviation: 19.0). The age distribution varied significantly between males and females (Figure 2), with females having a higher median age of arrest (68.0 vs 65.0 years, p.0001).Figure 2. Age distribution of OHCA events.32 1. Annual Estimates of the Resident Population: April 1, 2022 to July 1, 2023. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division."