More Support for Compression-Only CPR

[Elmore Furth]

I guess this means there will be less rescue breathingl.

CPR with chest compression alone led to outcomes comparable to those achieved with chest compression plus rescue breathing, with a slight edge for compression alone, data from two large clinical trials showed.

In a U.S. trial involving almost 2,000 patients, 12.5% lived to hospital discharge after chest compression as did 11% of patients who received chest compression and rescue breathing. A smaller Swedish study showed a 30-day survival of 8.7% with chest compression alone and 7% with conventional CPR.

Chest compression alone resulted in a trend toward better survival in two key subgroups of the U.S. study: patients with a cardiac cause of arrest and those with arrhythmias that could be treated with defibrillation.

"There was a consistent trend toward meaningful outcome differences in favor of chest compression alone in key clinical subgroups," Thomas D. Rea, MD, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and co-authors wrote in their conclusion.



More Support for Compression-Only CPR

[jody]

1. I'll vote for "chest compression plus rescue breathing". Otherwise I would be

dead since 2 June 2007.

[bemildred]

2. Maybe it depends on the case.

Sometimes one or the other might be better, we ought to work on figuring out how to tell the difference.

[jaxx]

3. Now it's 30 compressions, 2 breaths.

I just had mine renewed and they are talking about the all compressions vs the 2 breaths. Since the compressions force out air on their own, breathing in really doesn't do much different.