Milestones in treatment: the tipping point and the ResQ Trial.

摘要

Peter Nagele, in his Comment (Jan 22, p 276), recommends not to adopt active compression-decompression cardiopulmonary resuscitation with an impedance threshold device (ACDCPR+ITD) until there is further independent verification of the benefits. In fact there is already such verification. In three previous European clinical studies of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, this device combination was found to increase significantly both circulation during CPR and 24-h survival rates by more than 50% compared with standard CPR. Now the ResQ Trial, of which several of us were authors, reports a significant 50% increase in survival rates with good neurological function up to a year after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the USA. No study so far has shown harm with this new approach. If the new CPR method were to be -widely applied in Europe and North America, each year many thousands of additional lives could be saved.