[brian]

Medical personnel often don't follow several guidelines

CHICAGO - CPR is often performed inadequately by doctors, paramedics and nurses, according to two studies of resuscitation efforts during cardiac arrest.

Whether a stricken patient is in the hospital or on the way, the guidelines for administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation frequently are not followed.

Among common problems: Rescuers did not push hard enough or often enough on the victim's chest to restart the heart, and breathed air into the lungs too often - either mouth-to-mouth or through breathing tubes.

Both studies used an experimental monitor that assesses CPR quality, and both received funding from Laerdal Medical Corp., a Norwegian company that helped developed the device.

The studies appear in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

more: http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...0352/1001/news

Added:

Link to Abstract from JAMA:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content...urnalcode=jama

[medsurgnurse]

Originally Posted by brian

Medical personnel often don't follow several guidelines

CHICAGO - CPR is often performed inadequately by doctors, paramedics and nurses, according to two studies of resuscitation efforts during cardiac arrest.

Whether a stricken patient is in the hospital or on the way, the guidelines for administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation frequently are not followed.

Among common problems: Rescuers did not push hard enough or often enough on the victim's chest to restart the heart, and breathed air into the lungs too often - either mouth-to-mouth or through breathing tubes.

Both studies used an experimental monitor that assesses CPR quality, and both received funding from Laerdal Medical Corp., a Norwegian company that helped developed the device.

The studies appear in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

more: http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...0352/1001/news

I can hear the lawyers panting over this.

[RNCENCCRNNREMTP]

Originally Posted by brian

Medical personnel often don't follow several guidelines

CHICAGO - CPR is often performed inadequately by doctors, paramedics and nurses, according to two studies of resuscitation efforts during cardiac arrest.

Whether a stricken patient is in the hospital or on the way, the guidelines for administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation frequently are not followed.

Among common problems: Rescuers did not push hard enough or often enough on the victim's chest to restart the heart, and breathed air into the lungs too often - either mouth-to-mouth or through breathing tubes.

Both studies used an experimental monitor that assesses CPR quality, and both received funding from Laerdal Medical Corp., a Norwegian company that helped developed the device.

The studies appear in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

more: http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...0352/1001/news

CPR does NOT "restart the heart" as quoted in this article. CPR tries to maintain some degree of cardio-cerebral perfusion until advanced treatment (defibrillation and drug therapy, but mainly defibrillation) can be brought to the patient. CPR was not meant to be used on everybody but for those suffering sudden cardiac arrhythmic death as a stop-gap until ALS.

Stop saying CPR restarts a heart, it does not!!!!!!

[cjkes78]

This article really irritated me. I am a nursing student and I just got my AHA BLS for Healthcare Providers. I think it is difficult to get all 100 compressions in a minute. CPR is very tiring ... I know my class was wore out just practicing on the mannequin. When will people realize that health care providers are only human and do the best they can?

[macspuds]

It is sad that things like this happen, but I sincerely feel that anyone who decides to get "envolved" in attempting to help by administering CPR would do their best to do so correctly.
I guess my question is How does someone monitor the correctness of CPR on a person when they should be too busy helping the person who needs it?
One cannot place monitors on each person who is getting CPR to measure correctness can they.
I would think that anyone who initiates CPR on a person would know how to do it or they wouldn't do it at all.

[elkpark]

These articles show up every few years. The one thing that everyone overlooks when they get all self-righteous about the "correct" way to do CPR is that CPR, even done perfectly, is only marginally better than doing NOTHING AT ALL. My father, an anesthesiologist, has always joked that the only thing CPR accomplishes is to allow the floor staff to feel they're doing something useful while waiting for the code team to arrive ...

[brian]

I just updated the original post with a link to the JAMA abstract, here it is as well:

Link to Abstract from JAMA:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content...urnalcode=jama

[brian]

Here is a related article, except this is Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest :

Quality of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation During Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/293/3/299

[macspuds]

Originally Posted by elkpark

These articles show up every few years. The one thing that everyone overlooks when they get all self-righteous about the "correct" way to do CPR is that CPR, even done perfectly, is only marginally better than doing NOTHING AT ALL. My father, an anesthesiologist, has always joked that the only thing CPR accomplishes is to allow the floor staff to feel they're doing something useful while waiting for the code team to arrive ...

Thanks for the nice reply.
macspuds

[brian]

I don't take offense to these studies? Yes, these articles may come out every few years, and yes, maybe CPR isn't much better than doing anything at all.... but, if people can improve their technique, and possible provide a better compressions etc... through some studies that might evoke better education or more effective treatments, devices etc... just my

If we didn't study things like this or any other practices, we wouldn't have reason to ever improve anything? Research is not always our enemy.