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Posted

Hi group! Long time reader, first time poster. I'm an EMT-Basic, and work for a large water park.

The other day I was helping with our weekly inservice training for our lifeguards (we were reviewing CPR, AED, oxygen, and basic first aid). For CPR, I had everybody grab a partner (one guard was the patient, the other was the rescuer). I shouted out the scenario and had the rescuers count and verbalize their steps in unison with the other groups.

When they were doing their compressions, I noticed everybody was going a little slow (about one compression / second). I informed them of the proper pace (100 / minute), and told them about "Staying Alive". One guard asked me, "Why?" I informed him that the pace was necessary to keep the blood pumping at a decent pace. He then asked who researched what the most effective pacing was, to which I replied, "I think the AHA, but I'm not sure."

That got me thinking: Are their any academic papers on why CPR procedures are the way they are? I understand the basic reasons behind most of them, but I think it'd be neat to read some of the research that went into the development of the policies. Like, what research went into the "compressions first" change that happened last year?

If anyone could direct me to some official looking research on the subject, I'd much appreciate it.

Posted

You are partially correct. You can go to the AHA website and read about the international consensus in the AHA publication "Circulation." AHA guidelines are based on international consensus. Many forms of literature, studies, meta analyses and so on are looked at and discussed by the committee. Ultimately, consensus occurs; however, this is just consensus and the process involves a significant amount of give and take diplomacy before people agree, and the agreement is often a compromise.

This concept of consensus is not exactly concrete/absolute, but I do believe we are at least progressing in the right direction.

Take care,

chbare.

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Posted

I don't know how adept you are at reading scientific studies but check out pubmed.com It is an online warehouse of medical research. If you do not have education/experience in reading medical literature, stick with the abstract portion of the studies as this will give you the gist of what the entire study is about. Use search terms such as "compression only CPR" "coronary perfusion pressure" "compression rate for CPR"

That should get you started. You can also visit the website of the AHA, which should provide quite a bit of reading.

Welcome to the City. I hope you'll stick around.

Posted (edited)

There is a TON of science behind the changes...and more every day (Thank You Cobb, Safar, and others!!!!)

I do a "science behind CPR" lecture frequently (for the past 5 years) to all levels of providers, including once a year to a batch of lifegaurds. Its a little bit challanging without me to explain it slide by slide, but after 1.5 hours, even 16 year olds are EXCITED about doing ROCK STAR CPR.

Here is a link to my latest version on slideshare.com. (its like a youtube of power point presentations). Ther eare a couple of new things I need to include that came out this month...but its 95% current.

The formating gets a little wonky on a couple of slides but you should be able to view it just fine.

If you want to chat on the phone I can proably take you through it slide by slide.

Here is the presentation. I also have one expanded for ACLS as well.....

http://www.slideshare.net/croaker260/importance-of-cpr-2010

Edited by croaker260
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