More people could survive cardiac arrest if more witnesses put CPR in their hands, Health News

A new study suggests that more lives could be saved after cardiac arrest if third parties applied CPR, even if it was only the hands-free version.

CPR hands-hands becoming an alternative to the traditional method – chest compressions badociated with mouth-to-mouth rescue breaths – Swedish researchers decided to study the impact of the simpler method.

They found that when the rates of one or the other type of CPR increased, the chances of surviving a sudden cardiac arrest doubled.

"In this national study (we have seen), a nearly six-fold higher proportion of patients receiving compression-only CPR," said co-author Dr. Jacob Hollenberg, director of the Resuscitation Science Center at Karolinska Institutet. "Any type of CPR was badociated with doubled survival rates compared to non-PCR cases before the arrival of the SMU."

It is currently unknown whether the CPR, including mouth-to-mouth breaths, performed by pbaders-by, is superior to the simpler method using only hands, Hollenberg said in an email. There is a large randomized controlled trial underway to answer this question, he added.

Hollenberg suspects that more people would be willing to learn CPR by hand than with the traditional method.

For the study published in Circulation, Hollenberg and colleagues badyzed all cardiac arrests observed by out-of-hospital witnesses reported in the Swedish cardiopulmonary resuscitation registry between 2000 and 2017. In total, researchers had data on 30,445 patients.

The proportion of patients receiving CPR by pbadersby increased from 40.8% in 2000-2005 to 68.2% in 2011-2017. The proportion of those who achieved standard CPR was 35.4% initially and 38.1% in the last period. But over the same period, the proportion of people receiving single-handed CPR increased from 5.4% to 30.1%.

Over the nearly two decades covered by the study, survival rates improved for both groups of patients. Survival at 30 days after standard CPR increased from 9.4% to 16.2% and after hand-held CPR from 8.0% to 14.3%.

Overall, compared to patients who had no CPR on the part of a third, those who had standard CPR before the arrival of first responders were 2.6 times more likely to survive up to 30 days and those with only CPR hands were twice as likely to survive. 30 days.

The study shows that any type of CPR is better than no CPR, said Dr. Clifton Callaway, vice president of emergency medicine at the University Medical Center. from Pittsburgh. "This is an extremely robust data set," Callaway said. "They have been able to follow this for many, many years."

The American Heart Association has popularized CPR alone, said Callaway. "The message they're trying to convey is that if you do not choose to practice mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, you can still do chest compressions and help a person in cardiac arrest," he said. noting that mouth-to-mouth is always necessary for other conditions, such as drowning.

The reason that only hands can work is that when people experience cardiac arrest, they still have oxygen in their lungs, Callaway said. "Chest compressions will save you a little time until someone comes to restart the heart," he said.

The other benefit of hands-free CPR is that 911 operators can talk to you about it even if you have not had any training, Callaway said. "Dispatchers should be able to encourage anyone to do chest compressions and provide that potential to last until the help of a professional arrives" , he added. "In my mind, there is no reason why 60 to 80 percent of Americans suffering from cardiac arrest can not receive help from pbadersby."