Improving CPR

Filed in archive Treatment on August 24, 2005

Proper CPR is key to improving the already difficult chance of survival in cardiac arrest. Measures are being taken to improve this:

More than 300,000 Americans each year die of cardiac arrest, where the heart's electrical system goes haywire and the heart abruptly stops beating.

Portable defibrillators can increase survival, delivering a jolt of electricity that stuns the heart, ending the abnormal rhythm and giving it a chance to resume a normal beat.

But the heart-zappers alone aren't enough. Virtually all cardiac-arrest victims need CPR, too. It buys time until a defibrillator arrives. Often, it's needed immediately after zapping, as the heart struggles to resume circulation.

Also, studies show that doing CPR first makes defibrillation more likely to work if cardiac arrest has lasted longer than three minutes. The longer someone goes without oxygen, the more their abnormal heart rhythm degrades until it's unshockable.

But "it has to be good CPR. We don't want to delay defibrillation for crummy CPR," warns Dr. Lance Becker of the University of Chicago, co-author of one of a pair of surprising studies earlier this year that found even the best-trained rescuers doctors, nurses and paramedics too frequently give inadequate CPR.

(Neergaard, "New Efforts Begin to Improve CPR", AP/ABC News, Aug.22)