Post by ozneil on Oct 6, 2010 21:13:34 GMT -1
From today's Australian
Interesting
GUIDELINES on heart attacks are being reviewed as research shows bystanders are more likely to save lives with chest compression alone.
The Australian Resuscitation Council will issue the new guidelines later this year after considering research that suggests people are reluctant to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on strangers.
ARC chairman Ian Jacobs said: "Doing something is better than nothing. If people are going to do anything, then they should do compression-only CPR, but ifthey are trained and confident in CPR, they should continue with that."
A US study released this week found that cardiac arrest patients who received compression-only CPR from bystanders were 60 per cent more likely to survive.
According to the study of 4415 people in Arizona, those who received compression-only CPR from a bystander had a 13.3 per cent chance of survival, compared with 7.8 per cent for those who received conventional full CPR. Cardiac arrest patients who did not receive CPR had a 5.2 per cent chance of survival.
The research was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Emergency physician David Mountain, of the Australian Medical Association, said compression-only CPR had good outcomes for cardiac arrest patients because it created an effective blood flow to the brain, and that people generally did a better job because they could concentrate on just one manoeuvre.
Professor Mountain said bystanders were also more likely to conduct compression-only CPR because some were concerned about performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on strangers.
"You have to try to make this process as simple and as palatable as possible," he said.
Peter Hartley, a senior lecturer of paramedic sciences at Victoria University, said the evidence was now "very clear" that better outcomes were achieved if there were minimal interruptions to compression.
Mr Hartley said in an ideal scenario, two people trained in CPR would work simultaneously, one performing mouth-to-mouth and the other conducting compressions.
However, he said maintaining the ratio of 30 compressions to two ventilations could be difficult for someone working alone.
Mr Hartley said the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation would soon be handing down the findings of its review of new research, and the ARC could well decide that compression-only CPR was "the way to go".
Interesting
