CPR and AED Unit Research | Articles, Studies & More
As a national leader in providing American Heart Association courses to large and small businesses alike, Annuvia finds it important to share the latest world-wide research in this important, life-saving industry.
CPR Training Research
The two papers are remarkably similar in design and results. One was conducted in Washington state — mostly the Seattle suburbs — and in London, England. The other study was done in Sweden. In both cases, patients whose hearts had stopped received either traditional CPR, or a version with chest-compressions only. The patients were divided randomly, with 911 dispatchers giving instructions to callers who performed the CPR.
In the Seattle-London experiment, patients receiving chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth were more likely to survive without brain damage. In both experiments, patients getting chest-compressions only were more likely to survive, period.
In both cases, the difference was small enough that it was not considered statistically significant. But the authors — and an accompanying editorial — all said the findings support the idea that bystanders should be encouraged to do steady chest compressions on victims of apparent cardiac arrest, without pausing to give breaths. Learn more here.
- Likelihood of CPR by Bystanders Depends on Location of Cardiac Arrest
Sasson and colleagues explain that more than 300 000 cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest occur in the US each year, and outcomes vary markedly, with survival rates ranging from 0.2% in Detroit to 16.0% in Seattle. The variation can be explained, in part, by different rates of bystander-initiated CPR. On average, bystanders administer CPR in less than one-third of all out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.
AED Unit Research
The chain of survival begins with early access, in which the patient is helped as quickly as possible. Early access includes the implied component of early recognition. The resuscitation chain is initiated when a medical emergency is recognized and the emergency medical system accessed and activated.1 The time required for access begins the moment an emergency is recognized, by either the person with symptoms or a witness to the emergency. With sudden cardiac arrest, access time begins at the moment of collapse, and includes recognition of the emergency, the decision to make the call, time spent locating a telephone and emergency number, interrogation of the caller by the emergency dispatcher, and the decision to send an emergency vehicle. Learn more here.
Training and equipping volunteers to attempt early defibrillation within a structured response system can increase the number of survivors to hospital discharge after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in public locations. Trained laypersons can use AEDs safely and effectively.
