Tuesday, December 11, 2007

CPR Without Mouth-to-Mouth Found Effective in Cardiac Arrest

STOCKHOLM, Dec. 10 -- When bystanders try to help a person in cardiac arrest, a simpler version of CPR using chest compression only appears to work as well as full-scale resuscitation, two studies showed.
Action Points --->
Explain to interested patients that CPR is known to improve survival when people suffer cardiac arrest, but outside of a hospital setting many people are reluctant to administer it, either because they don't know how or because they fear infection.
Note that these studies suggest a simpler form of CPR may be as effective in saving lives, without the fear of infection from mouth-to-mouth contact.
In one retrospective and one prospective study published in the Dec. 18/25 issue of Circulation, chest compression without mouth-to-mouth breathing led to survival rates similar to standard CPR.
The findings may save lives, researchers involved in both studies said, because many people hesitate to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for fear of infection.
While waiting for ambulance crews, bystanders used standard CPR in 73% of the cases and chest compression only in 10% of the cases, said Katarina Bohm, R.N., of the Karolinska Institute, who was lead author of a 15-year retrospective study of 11,275 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Sweden.
Bohm and colleagues found that there was no significant difference in one-month survival between the two techniques: 7.2% of those who got standard CPR were alive a month later and so were 6.7% of those who got chest compression only.
In 17% of cases, bystanders used mouth-to-mouth alone, without chest compression, but that resulted in a 4.5% survival rate, which was significantly worse (P<0.0001)
Additional source: CirculationSource reference: Bohm K, et al "Survival is similar after standard treatment and chest compression only in out-of-hospital bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation" Circulation 2007; DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.710194.

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