New CPR Technique Triples Cardia Arrest Survival Rate
As most emergency teams do not arrive on the scene in that critical first four minutes, the new resuscitation approach calls for a round of 200 chest compressions given in the first two minutes to improve the odds that the heart will restart.
“Traditionally, we’ve told them to defibrillate right away. When they do that, the patient dies frequently,” Bobrow said in a telephone interview.
In 2004, only 3 percent of people in Arizona who had a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital survived.
Bobrow wanted to improve those odds. He and colleagues studied the use of minimally interrupted cardiac resuscitation, a highly choreographed method of CPR for emergency medical workers that is also called cardiocerebral resuscitation.
After the first 200 compressions, the victim gets a shock, then another worker jumps in and gives another set of 200 chest compressions. At that point, they may give a shot of epinephrine to stimulate the heart, and then insert a tube into the trachea to ventilate the lungs.