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American Heart Association Revises CPR Guidelines |
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The American Heart Association (AHA) issued new guidelines for
cardiopulmonary resuscitation, better known as CPR, making rapid chest
compressions the mainstay of basic life support for bystanders trying to
revive people whose hearts have stopped. These guidelines are intended
only for adults with little change made to the guidelines when CPR is
used on children.
The AHA decision was driven by a growing body of research showing that bystanders are more likely to perform compression-only CPR on strangers and that it works better than conventional CPR.
A landmark study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that bystanders who applied hands-only CPR were able to boost survival to 34% from 18% for those who got conventional CPR or none at all. In addition, the percentage of people willing to provide CPR rose from 28% in 2005 to 40% in 2009.
The new guidelines dictate that a bystander should compress the victim's chest 100 times a minute to a depth of about 2 inches. That keeps blood and oxygen flowing to the brain, sustaining it until help arrives. Stopping for rescue breaths can interrupt blood flow.
Studies also show that bystanders reluctant to perform mouth-to-mouth breathing often give up, thinking there's nothing they can do. "Bystanders aren't doing anything in two-thirds of cases," Sayre says. "This is not hard; it's really easy."
USAToday
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