CPR
Glendale firefighters in Arizona are teaching their residents the new chest compression only CPR we wrote about in a previous post. The Arizona Republic wrote about it today and it appears the turnout is huge. Their class is taught in about 2 hours which is about half the class time of a current full CPR class. Although the current American Heart Association and American Red Cross CPR curriculum doesn’t recognize this method (yet), we applaud any effort that empowers more people to save lives. New “Guidelines” here we come (although it could still be a few years away)!
The December issue of Circulation reports on the conclusions of two studies which show CPR done without rescue breathing may be as effective as the compression/ventilation combination we’re taught to do now. The new method is called “CC-CPR.” “CC” stands for “chest compressions.” The studies were conducted in Sweden and Japan. An article about the findings was posted by U.S. News and World Report. It is not a part of the current American Heart Association or American Red Cross CPR protocols. The amount of data coming out about this has us convinced that CC-CPR will be considered as …
A biomedical engineer at Purdue University has developed an alternative CPR compression technique that is nothing like we’ve seen before. It’s a new method of performing chest compressions on a patient that appears effective and is the second alternative we’ve seen that downplays the step of rescue breathing. Although this news item was released back in September of this year, it appears in print in this month’s issue of JEMS.
In late November 2005 the American Heart Association announced changes to the “rules” of CPR. The new way to perform CPR became known as “Guidelines 2005.” The new guidelines should have prompted all AED owners to upgrade their machines to conform to the new guidelines. Since the new ruling went into affect 2 years ago, Philips, makers of the OnSite, FRx, FR3, and other AED models, has announced a deadline for upgrade availability for their Heartstart line of automated external defibrillators. Owners of these devices have until December 31, 2007 to place their upgrade order with Philips Medical Systems. …
Yesterday we posted news about a new CPR manikin available at the AED Superstore called CasPeR the CPR dog. Now we find that a technique exists to perform CPR on birds. We’re not sure of the accreditation, but it does make sense. Perhaps a manikin for Avian CPR and rescue breathing is around the corner?