The effectiveness of chest compressions was unequivocal in this case and in an untold number of similar cases of patients who received a second chance at life after receiving closed-chest compression, often in conjunction with artificial respiration, defibrillation, and other forms of advanced life support and postresuscitation care. However, such cases represent the exception to the rule, since to this day, almost 50 years after publication of this landmark article,1 only a minority of cardiac arrest patients survive to hospital discharge neurologically intact. This is true whether the cardiac arrest occurs in the hospital,3 where the survival rate averages 17%, or out of the hospital,4-5 where survival in most communities is only 2% to 6%, when all cardiac arrest events, not only the most treatable cases (eg, witnessed arrest, bystander performed CPR, initial rhythm ventricular fibrillation, and bystander use of an automated external defibrilla-tor in a public setting accounting for less than 20% of the total), are used as the denominator for analysis.
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