CArdiac REhabilitation and BAsic life Support, the CAREBAS project. Training cardiac patients to save lives: A six-month follow up study

摘要

Sir, Taking advantage of the educational vocation of cardiac rehabilitation (CRH) programs, the CArdiac REhabilitation and BAsic life Support (CAREBAS) project was launched to expand basic life support (BLS) training to high-risk populations: patients suffering acute coronary syndrome (ACS) or revascularization. The aim of this study was to assess these patients' BLS skills retention at 6 months after two different BLS training strategies applied within a CRH program. One hundred and fourteen patients with coronary artery disease (experimental-group: G-CPR; control-group: G-Stan), enrolled in the 8-week exercise-based CRH program were invited to participate and recruited into two groups. The detailed study protocol has previously been reported. Baseline BLS skills (BLS sequence, CPR quality and AED use) were evaluated on a simulated dispatcher-assisted scenario of OHCA (T0) and after a 20-min BLS instruction (T1). At this point, patients attended the same 8-week model of CRH program, which only differed in the exercise-training plan. G-Stan attended a conventional program and G-CPR also received compression-only CPR rolling refreshers on a MinniAnne1 manikin to substitute some of the upper-body strength exercises. After completing the CRH program, all patients were evaluated following the abovementioned scheme at the end of the program (T2) and at 6 months (T6m).