The American Heart Association recommends cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) by bystanders with chest compression only for adults who have cardiac arrests, but not for children. These recommendations have new support in a large observational study from Japan examining outcomes in 5170 out-of hospital paediatric arrests over a 3 year period.
For children who had out-of-hospital cardiac arrests from non-cardiac causes, conventional CPR (with rescue breathing) by bystander was associated with improved outcomes compared with compression-only CPR (7·2% [45/624] favourable one month neurological outcome vs 1·6% [6/380]; OR 5·54, 2·52–16·99). In children who had arrests of cardiac causes conventional and compression-only CPR were similarly effective. Infants < 1 year had uniformly poor outcomes.
An editorial points out that this is the largest study that has analysed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in children, and the overall survival of 9% with only 3% of children having a good neurological outcome, is consistent with previous reports.
Conventional and chest-compression-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation by bystanders for children who have out-of-hospital cardiac arrests: a prospective, nationwide, population-based cohort study
Lancet. 2010 Apr 17 345:1347-54
Tag Archives: BLS
A human suction unit for choking
A case is described of a 12 month old who completely obstructed her airway from an inhaled plastic ketchup container. As she did not improve with backslaps or chest thrusts her father, a physician, suctioned her airway using his own mouth (intermittently spitting out secretions) until the obstruction was relieved and the object removed. Something to think about if you’re at the end of your own child’s choking algorithm and you have no airway equipment with you.
Maneuver for the recovery of a foreign body causing a complete airway obstruction: illustrative case.
Pediatr Emerg Care. 2010 Jan;26(1):39-40
Infant CPR – push deeper?
A small study of 6 PICU patients requiring CPR for cardiac arrest due to primary cardiac disease showed that blood pressure as measured by an arterial line increased when the depth of chest compression was increased from one third to one half of the chest wall diameter (using the hand-encircling method). Systolic, mean, and pulse pressures increased significantly whereas diastolic blood pressure (a key determinant of coronary perfusion) did not.
Should the ILCOR guidelines be changed to recommend deeper chest compressions? More data are needed, but the take home message here may be that invasive arterial monitoring is a good guide to the effectiveness of CPR during cardiac arrest resuscitation.
Depth of sternal compression and intra-arterial blood pressure during CPR in
infants following cardiac surgery
Paeds BVM for adult resus
Smaller self-inflating bags produce greater guideline consistent ventilation in simulated cardiopulmonary resuscitation
A comparison between two sizes of self-inflating resuscitation bags revealed improved adherence to resuscitation guidelines with the smaller bag. Student paramedics were more likely to produce suboptimal tidal volumes and ventilation rates with a 1500ml bag than a 1000ml bag during simulated ventilation of an artificial lung model.
BMC Emerg Med. 2009 Feb 20;9:4
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19228432
Full text at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-227X/9/4