Submission + - CPR not as effective as chest compressions alone
patiwat writes: "A Japanese study has found that people suffering from cardiac arrest were more likely to recover without brain damage if rescuers focused on chest compressions rather than on rescue breaths, and some experts advised dropping the mouth-to-mouth part of CPR altogether. Interrupting chest compression to perform mouth-to-mouth ventilation might do more harm than good if blood flow to the heart was not properly re-established, a researcher from Tokyo's Surugadai Nihon University Hospital said. Also, people could be too squeamish to lock lips with a stranger, whereas more might be prepared to attempt hands-only resuscitation, noted the study published in the current issue of The Lancet. Dr Gordon Ewy, the chief of cardiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, wrote in the same journal that the results "should lead to a prompt interim revision of the guidelines for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest." More than 300,000 Americans die from cardiac arrest each year. Roughly 9 out of 10 cardiac arrest victims die before they get to a hospital — partly because they do not get CPR."
