CardioExchange Archive

October 18th, 2010

New CPR Guidelines Replace A-B-C with C-A-B

Larry Husten, PHD

Chest compressions gain pride of place (and trump alphabetical order) in the newly published and  much-anticipated updated guidelines for CPR from the AHA. The new guidelines replace the traditional A-B-C (Airway-Breathing-Compressions) with C-A-B (Compressions-Airway-Breathing), recommending that “chest compressions be the first step for lay and professional rescuers to revive victims of sudden cardiac arrest.” The […]

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October 14th, 2010

Meta-Analysis Lends More Support to Compression-Only CPR

Larry Husten, PHD

There’s new evidence supporting the movement away from traditional bystander CPR in favor of chest-compression-only CPR. In a paper appearing online in the Lancet, Michael Hüpfl, Harald F Selig, and Peter Nagele report the results of two separate meta-analyses. In the first meta-analysis, the investigators combined data from 3 randomized trials comparing compression-only CPR to […]

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October 5th, 2010

Compression-Only CPR Gains More Support

Larry Husten, PHD

There’s more evidence to encourage widespread adoption of chest compression-only CPR by nonmedical responders. Bentley Bobrow and colleagues analyzed data from 4415 adults with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest who did not receive CPR from a medical professional. After adjusting for baseline differences, the survival rate did not differ between people who received conventional CPR from lay […]

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August 27th, 2010

Compression-Only CPR: It May Help Bystanders Breathe Easier

Mark Steven Link, MD

A recent randomized, controlled study in the NEJM showed that patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest who received compression-only CPR or traditional CPR had similar 30-day survival rates. CardioExchange asks Dr. Mark Link, a cardiac electrophysiologist and member of the American Heart Association Advanced Cardiac Life Support Committee, to answer our questions about compression-only vs. traditional CPR. […]

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July 29th, 2010

CPR Studies: More Emphasis on Chest Compressions

Larry Husten, PHD

Two new studies of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) published in the New England Journal of Medicine provide strong support for recent initiatives that emphasize continuous chest compressions over the current standard of chest compression interrupted by rescue breathing. Rea and colleagues studied 1941 patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest who were randomized to receive one of the two […]

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