ProCPR Blog

Bystanders who start CPR on children before paramedics arrive can save lives and limit brain damage, regardless of whether they do the old-fashioned type of CPR with chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth or the newer “hands-only” CPR, a study from Japan confirms.

In the study of children who had suffered cardiac arrest outside a hospital, those who received any CPR were about three times more likely to survive than those who did not get CPR.

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An article appearing in the United Kingdom newspaper The Daily Mail talks about a possible change in CPR guidelines after a girl lost her life, who almost certainly could have been rescued.  The lifeguard had revived the girl to the point that the girl was breathing, and stopped as she was trained to do, but didn’t check for a pulse.

Sophie Konderak, 16, suffered from sudden cardiac arrest during a training session at a leisure center.  The lifeguard dragged her from the water, unconscious, and immediately began cardiopulmonary resuscitation.  She was doing both chest compressions and rescue breathing.  She had never before tried to revive someone, and when Sophie started breathing, she had believed the effort to be successful.

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People who received detailed audio instructions on how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) demonstrated better compression rate, hand placement and compression depth than those who did not receive recorded instructions by cell phone. The results of the study are published today online in Annals of Emergency Medicine (“Cell Telephone Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: Audio Instructions When Needed by Lay Rescuers: A Randomized, Controlled Trial”).

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Joshua Duggar, one of the 19 children of Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar, called 911 as he and his brother John rescued a six-year-old girl who was injured in a car accident last week.

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Talk about your amazing CPR stories.  This man suffered from sudden cardiac arrest, and the doctor did not give up.  He had been dead, but now he is living back at home in Brooklyn.  It took 47 minutes of CPR: 4,500 chest compressions and eight zaps with a defibrillator (AED) to bring him back, but they never gave up hope.  Could this story alter our views of the effectiveness of CPR, and the ability for someone to recover from a cardiac arrest?

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The first randomized intra-arrest cooling study performed using a novel intra-nasal cooling method showed much faster and earlier cooling in treated patients and significantly higher neurologically intact survival – to – discharge rate in many patients. The Pre-Resuscitation Intra-Nasal Cooling Effectiveness (PRINCE) study involved 200 patients and was conducted by 15 Emergency Medical Systems (EMS) in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic and Sweden. The aim was to determine safety and efficacy of intra-nasal cooling during ongoing resuscitation of cardiac arrest patients even before the return of circulation (ROSC).

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If you’ve been following the blog, you’d know that we seemed to disappear from updates for a few months.  We’ve been really busy with some new developments since late August that we’re hoping to launch in the near future.  In the meantime, if you didn’t notice the changes to ProCPR, ProFirstAid or ProBloodborne, we’ve made some changes.

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We’ve been working on a new way to get weekly training videos, and have just released a gadget that you can add to your iGoogle Homepage. It is updated every week with a different CPR training video so that you can keep your skills up to date throughout the year and between certifications. We’re really excited to finally be able to bring it to you.

What is iGoogle?

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This is something that I haven’t heard about until I found this article.  It makes sense, though, as there aren’t many more than a few thousand around worldwide.  Firefighters in Sandy, Oregon are convinced, having used the device to save a life, that it’s one of the best purchases the department has made, and it cost them $15,000.  But they’re quick to brush that off, as EMT First Responder and volunteer firefighter Jon Turcotte said: “We can’t put a price on the value of a human life. The cost is irrelevant.”

Nathan Jaqua, an EMT Basic and student firefighter had this to say of the device: “This has changed the way we work a cardiac arrest incident. We use the same skills, but it changes the entire atmosphere.”

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Getting an AED for your company, for only a few thousand dollars, can be the difference between life and death.  One person that knows this very well is stockbroker David Browne.  Located in Australia, he drives a silver-grey sports car and owns one of the top wineries on the Bellarine Peninsula in Australia.  But his life would have been over right now, had he not made a purchase that cost him less than $5000.  That purchase was an automated external defibrillator, or AED.  He made the investment about three years ago, and it saved his life.

Running Tolhurst Group, Australia’s oldest stockbroking company, he is 63 years old.  On Friday, March 27th, he was running a meeting in the boardroom.  After the meeting he went for a cup of tea, which he remembers beginning to pour, but that’s all.  He had a sudden cardiac arrest.  His heart had stopped beating.

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