Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation: A chance to save a life

摘要

In October 2010, the most recent iteration of the Consensus on Science and Treatment Recommendations for Pediatric Advanced Life Support presented trends in survival statistics from 25 yrs of published studies in pediatric cardiac arrest. Over that time period, survival from in-hospital cardiac arrest appeared to improve from 10% to 15% in the 1980s to approximately 25% in 2006 . In contrast, survival from out-of-hospital pediatric cardiac arrest has remained 6%-9% for many years in North America and Europe. Clearly, much work needs to be done to better understand and treat out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in children.In this issue of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Akahane et al (8) provide important new information from their population-based study of 7,624 pediatric out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Japan from 2005 to 2008. Among the important findings are 1) the significant association between bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and 1-month neurologically favorable survival, 2) lower survival rates and lower rates of neurologically favorable survival for high-school-aged patients compared with younger children, and 3) higher survival rates with use of either public access defibrillation or defibrillation by emergency medical service providers.