More cardiac arrest victims could survive with rapid response

ANAHEIM, the United States, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- More people will survive cardiac arrest if emergency medical dispatchers improve rapid response, according to updated CPR guidelines published this week by the American Heart Association (AHA).

In particular, lives can be saved if chest compression-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) instructions were given over the phone and if infants and children receive chest compressions with rescue breaths.

According to the AHA, immediate bystander help has been shown to double or triple survival chances among the more than 350,000 Americans who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year. Almost 90 percent of people who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests die.

The 2017 American Heart Association Focused Updates on Adult and Pediatric Basic Life Support and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Qualit, re-emphasize the critical factors to increase survival from cardiac arrest, including the importance of bystanders starting immediate chest compressions if they see an adult collapse in a suspected cardiac arrest.

"Lives are saved by circulation, not ventilation, in the early minutes," Karl Kern, M.D., chair of the Association's Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee, was quoted as saying in a news release.

The 2017 Focused Updates stress the importance of providing dispatch-assisted chest compression-only CPR instructions to callers for adults with suspected out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

"The more they attempt, the more people are going to be saved," said Kern.

Telephone CPR not only assists the untrained caller, but it reminds the CPR-trained caller how to provide high-quality CPR in a stressful situation.

Currently, only half of the nation's dispatchers provide telephone CPR, which has been identified as a critical intervention in the chain of survival for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

The 2017 Focused Updates found even more evidence supporting the need for compressions and rescue breaths during CPR for children who have not yet reached puberty.

More than 7,000 children die from an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest annually. In most cases, it is the result of a lack of oxygen, and rescue breaths can keep oxygenated blood flowing through the system, according to the updated guidelines.

The updated CPR guidelines reaffirm that compressions and ventilation are needed for infants and children in cardiac arrest. It also strongly recommends that bystanders who are unwilling or unable to deliver rescue breaths should provide chest compressions for infants and children.

"The 2017 Focused Updates validate what we already know about performing CPR and offer a scientific basis for optimizing CPR quality to save more lives," said Kern, professor of medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine -- Tucson's Sarver Heart Center. "It's critically important to translate new science to bedside care as quickly as possible, especially as the amount of scientific research available is growing rapidly."

Since establishing its Guidelines in 1966, the Association has led evaluation and dissemination of the latest resuscitation science to help inform and modernize CPR. These guidelines have been used to train more than 22 million people annually in CPR, cardiovascular care and first aid around the world.

The Guidelines had previously been updated every five years, and this marks the first year that the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation, an organization of global resuscitation experts, is switching to an annual format.