photo credit: leppre

I subscribe to PRNet, which sends me news clips and press releases relevant to my areas of interest. As an ex-EMT and still certified American Heart Association CPR/AED/First Aid Instructor, I think I know a little bit about CPR.

The first thing the media, and people in general, need to understand is that CPR is a misnomer. CPR stands for Cardiac Pulmonary Resuscitation. In reality, CPR keeps a person alive until they can receive proper emergency medical care. In all my years as an EMT, I have never witnessed CPR actually reviving a single cardiac patient whose heart had stopped beating. With the exception of drowning victims, or victims of electrical shock, CPR just doesn’t do that. In cardiac patients, CPR keeps the blood and oxygen flowing to the brain and other vital organs until they can be treated in the Emergency Room. So when I read stories like this, I get a bit annoyed.

HEALTH: CPR CAN INCREASE SURVIVAL RATES. DR. BENJAMIN S. ABELLA, nationally renowned CPR and emergency care expert: “Each year, an estimated 166,000 lives are claimed by sudden cardiac arrest, an electronic malfunction that causes rapid and chaotic heart activity. In recent years, several studies have shown that medical professionals were performing poor CPR. Providing objective metrics and educational feedback to medical personnel who perform CPR on a cardiac arrest patient can significantly improve ventilation rate, compression rate and depth of compression, which can lead to higher initial survival rates for cardiac arrest patients.” Abella is available to speak about a recent study on the CPR sensing and recording technology and its clinical and training implications. 

 This ticked me off because it provides inaccurate information and implies that emergency medical personnel aren’t doing a very good job. The fact is, the death of a cardiac arrest patient is most often due to a delay in starting CPR. Many times, 5 or 6 people will call 911 while the rest of the people stand around and gawk. They seem to assume that the EMT/Paramedic will take care of everything once they arrive.

I’m not sure where Dr. Abella got his information, but the American Heart Association has done numerous studies which shows that early CPR, early use of an AED (automatic electronic defibrillator) and rapid response by emergency medical personnel is the number one way to save a cardiac arrest victim. In fact, their studies have shown that traditional CPR with xx number of compressions followed by xx number of rescue breaths is only a little more effective than simply pumping the chest in a bellows-like fashion. In fact, in many areas, 911 dispatchers are trained to tell callers just that. Instead of trying to teach them the formal way of doing CPR over the phone, they tell the caller to put their two interlocked hands over the lower breast bone and to pump as rapidly and as long as they can. Rescue breathing isn’t even encouraged because the bellows action of the chest compressions is what is really important. There is already plenty of oxygen in the bloodstream to keep the victim alive, and the pumping action even allows air to partially refill the lungs between compressions.

So remember folks. Just because someone has an M.D. after their name, it doesn’t mean they are infallible nor an expert. My suspicion is that this news brief was more intended to hype the “CPR sensing and recording technology” he wants to talk about. They had this kind of technology back when I first became an EMT, and it was eventually discontinued because it was too expensive and didn’t do a darn thing to actually save a person’s life. It just gave instructors a tool to measure pass/fail in classroom teaching environments.

The Dr. would have done a better service to the community by simply encouraging everyone to take a CPR/AED class from an American Heart Association certified instructor.