Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) has been around for centuries, reports the American Heart Association (AHA).  In 1740, the Paris Academy of Sciences officially recommended mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for drowning victims.  This developed and progressed into CPR in 1960, which includes close-chest cardiac resuscitation.

The Mayo Clinic describes the process of CPR in three steps: circulation, airways, and breathing.  First, it is necessary to resume blood circulation for the victim by using chest compression.  Second, airways should be positioned so they are clear.  Finally, the person administering CPR should check if the victim is breathing and, if not, breathe for the victim, which is commonly known as mouth-to-mouth.

CPR is known to save lives and, increasing exposure to training means that more people will be able to administer CPR.  For example, USA Today reports that a recent study found that the survival rate after cardiac arrest tripled in Denmark after a national effort to teach CPR to residents in 2005.  The number of people that received CPR from a non-medical bystander doubled between 2005 and 2010.  These results provide promise for other countries or communities hoping to reduce the mortality rate from cardiac arrest.

At the AHA Resuscitation Symposium, a presentation introduced the idea of training people to administer hands-only CPR using public kiosks, states Medical News Today.  If ambulances come quickly, experts believe that instructing people to just “push hard, push fast” saves more lives.  That is the idea behind the new guidelines released by the AHA in 2010 that permit the use of simpler hand-only or compression-only CPR in some cases instead of conventional CPR.  However, this approach is not ideal for rural or remote communities that need longer for an ambulance to arrive.  Those locations will also require mouth-to-mouth to give the victim a better chance of survival.

Statistics from the AHA indicate that there are nearly 383,000 out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests that occur annually, of which 88 percent occur at home.  Effective bystander CPR provided immediately after sudden cardiac arrest can double or triple a victim’s chance of survival, but, unfortunately, only 32 percent of cardiac arrest victims get CPR from a bystander.

Sudden cardiac arrest is not the same as a heart attack.  Sudden cardiac arrest occurs when electrical impulses in the heart become rapid or chaotic, which causes the heart to suddenly stop beating.  A heart attack occurs when the blood supply to part of the heart muscle is blocked. A heart attack may cause cardiac arrest.  Many victims appear healthy with no known heart disease or other risk factors.