Hidetada Fukushima, Masami Imanishi, Taku Iwami, Tadahiko Seki, Yasuyuki Kawai, Kazunobu Norimoto, Yasuyuki Urisono, Michiaki Hata, Kenji Nishio, Keigo Saeki, Norio Kurumatani, Kazuo Okuchi
BACKGROUND: Current guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) emphasise that emergency medical service (EMS) dispatchers should identify sudden cardiac arrest (CA) with abnormal breathing and assist lay rescuers performing CPR. However, lay rescuers description of abnormal breathing may be inconsistent, and it is unclear how EMS dispatchers provide instruction for CPR based on the breathing status of the CA victims described by laypersons. METHODS AND RESULTS: To investigate the incidence of abnormal breathing and the association between the EMS dispatcher-assisted CPR instruction and layperson CPR, we retrospectively analysed 283 witnessed CA cases whose information regarding breathing status of CA victims was available from population-based prospective cohort data...
April 2015: Emergency Medicine Journal: EMJ