[HN Gopher] CPR's true survival rate is lower than many people t...
___________________________________________________________________
CPR's true survival rate is lower than many people think
Author : rntn
Score : 94 points
Date : 2023-05-29 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| You can't make dead any deader.
|
| It might work. You may as well give it a shot, if only to say
| "well, at least I gave it a shot".
| sccxy wrote:
| Do your best to give their family $200k medical bill.
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| Or not, if you're not American.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Or prioritize your funds to pay for your healthcare, like
| most responsible Americans do.
| sccxy wrote:
| Two-thirds of people who file for bankruptcy cite medical
| issues as a key contributor to their financial downfall.
|
| What most people do not realize, according to one
| researcher, is that their health insurance may not be
| enough to protect them.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason-
| most...
| fsckboy wrote:
| healthcare still costs regardless of who pays for it.
|
| And the countries with the most comprehensive socialized
| systems also pride themselves on their civic-mindedness,
| think about others, not just yourself: shouldn't you, out
| of civic duty, balance trying to save the public money at
| the same time as you decide whether you save a life?
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Why would they get a "medical bill"?
| hnthrowaway8860 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Generally CPR is performed when there is no pulse or breathing as
| a last ditch effort to keep a brain viable until a full medical
| team can do their work.
|
| In other words CPR is performed on people who show no signs of
| life/are already dead.
|
| The survival rate for the control group is 0, so it is kind of a
| miracle that anyone survives.
| brianwawok wrote:
| It's not that simple. People who do not get CPR live. Others
| who get CPR didn't need it. Control group of 0 is missing the
| complexities of real life.
| groestl wrote:
| I was actually surprised to learn that survivors are in the upper
| single digits. After all, when you start CPR, people are already
| dead. Personally, I had to do CPR twice (as a paramedic), and
| sadly neither of the patients survived.
| Faaak wrote:
| Maybe dumb question here, but does it at least help to salvage
| the organs later on (if the donor was okay with it) ?
| uberuberuber wrote:
| Critical care medic here. Adult CPR at least has some evidence in
| its favor on a population level, but only as a bridge to using
| electricity. CPR alone is merely slowing deaths arrival.
|
| There is NO evidence to support any of the commonly used advanced
| cardiac life support drugs in terms of functioning brain leaving
| the hospital. Epinephrine (for arrest, not shock or anaphylaxis),
| atropine, lidocaine, amiodarone, procainamide, digitalis, etc.
| Its electricity or bust.
|
| Just one of many reviews on this:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4129833/
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Would it make sense for households with those at risk of heart
| attack to invest in an AED?
| rdmirza wrote:
| Even better is installing an implantable cardiac
| defibrillator (ICD) in those at high risk.
| noughtme wrote:
| > at high risk.
|
| Before an event? I'm not sure what insurance would cover
| this. I don't really want open heart surgery before I need
| it.
| Calavar wrote:
| Plenty of insurance plans cover ICD implantation because
| it is recommended by the American College of Cardiology
| for specific situations:
|
| 1. moderately to severely reduced systolic function of
| the heart due to a heart attack that persists > 40 days
| after the heart attack
|
| 2. severely reduced systolic function of the heart of any
| cause that does not improve after 3 to 6 months of
| pharmacologic therapy
|
| 3. personal history of sudden cardiac death with a
| persistent risk factor
|
| ICD implantation is not open heart surgery. It is a
| relatively quick procedure that is done by a cardiologist
| rather than a cardiothoracic surgeon.
| robbiep wrote:
| The most common cause of sudden cardiac death is blocked left
| anterior descending artery.
|
| Generally this is unknown until it happens.
|
| It kills 250,000 Americans every year.
|
| It would make the most sense for people above 50 with a
| family history of heart disease to have a CT coronary
| angiogram or for those above 40 to have a Cardiac Calcium
| Score to risk stratify for future CTCA.
|
| Distributing AEDs is infrastructure heavy and indiscriminate
| because you don't know who actually needs one.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well as long as it only kills Americans, then the simple
| solution is to emigrate /s
| ericd wrote:
| At $1k, it's not a no-brainer, but it's also not that
| expensive in the context of the risk it counters.
| w10-1 wrote:
| "only as a bridge to using electricity"
|
| The key point is that the AED (automatic electric
| defibrillator) will tell you if you have a shockable rhythm.
|
| Many modern AED's can be used by untrained people, so if you
| see a cardiac arrest, find the nearest AED and deliver it
| and/or follow its (brief) instructions. Once you know this,
| you'll start tracking the last one you saw, and you'll find
| them more ubiquitous than you realized (and start advocating
| for one in your office).
|
| (And if you are doing CPR, the breathing part is less important
| than the chest compressions. Blood flow is more important than
| oxygenation. But always/only follow current
| guidelines/training.)
| bsder wrote:
| > (And if you are doing CPR, the breathing part is less
| important than the chest compressions. Blood flow is more
| important than oxygenation. But always/only follow current
| guidelines/training.)
|
| The problem is that this advice is situational.
|
| If electrocution is what caused the cardiac arrest, it is
| much better to give breaths than compressions. The heartbeat
| system resets itself before the respiratory system. The
| problem is then that the heart is back, uses up all its
| energy reserves, but there is no oxygen to replenish and the
| heart goes back into arrest.
| brianwawok wrote:
| As far as I can tell, many modern CPR classes dropped the
| breath part. Just focus on the chest part.
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| Sort of. CPR classes are divided into, at least, "CPR" and
| "BLS". Your basic CPR class may be a hands-only training,
| but the BLS classes still include rescue breathing and AED
| use, along with infant care.
| dathinab wrote:
| worse CPR doesn't do what people think it does
|
| CPR is not a live saving measure, it's a temporary live extension
| if it's not followed up with other measurements it's likely to
| not save a live. And that's assuming it does work, and is done
| correctly.
|
| but anyway it gives people another chance at live they most
| likely wouldn't have had otherwise
| [deleted]
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > The traumatic nature of CPR may be why as many as half of
| patients who survive wish they hadn't received it, even though
| they lived.
|
| It's the peak of coming up with data to make a story. The study
| was only for old people with chronic disease, where lot of them
| wouldn't want any life saving treatment let alone CPR. And even
| in that group if >50% of said they were happy to have gotten CPR.
| hirundo wrote:
| "The 2000 Federal Cardiac Arrest Survival Act grants those who
| administer CPR or use an AED immunity from civil charges, except
| in instances of willful misconduct or gross negligence."
|
| That should make it less risky to try and help in the U.S. But
| apparently it can still be a choice that's easy to get wrong.
| That makes me less likely to jump in as a bystander, and to bias
| intervention toward healthier looking victims who look like they
| could tolerate the treatment.
|
| https://www.cprcertified.com/blog/can-you-be-sued-for-perfor...
| [deleted]
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| On the other hand: More payouts are made for people NOT
| providing lifesaving care when they should.
|
| https://newsroom.heart.org/news/legal-risk-of-not-performing...
| querez wrote:
| Not sure what the situation is in the US, but I've taken 3-4
| first aid courses in my life (it's compulsory to get a driver's
| license where I live). Every time, they told us that CPR survival
| rates were abysmal if we aren't also using an AED. IIRC, with an
| AED the survival rate goes up significantly -- though this
| article states that in-hospital survival rates are only at 17%,
| which indicates it's not all that great with AED, either.
| willmadden wrote:
| Yeah, sure NPR. I'll take the CPR thank you very much. Next.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please review the site guidelines and stick to them?
| Your comment here broke quite a few of them, including:
|
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize._"
|
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| " _Don 't be snarky. [...] Edit out swipes._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| willmadden wrote:
| I didn't break the rules you cited. There is literally no
| comment to which I could respond. The OP linked a terrible
| article from a state sponsored news source without any
| comment.
|
| If I'm dying, I'll take the CPR. It's better than the
| alternative.
| themantalope wrote:
| Weird way to say that people should talk to their doctors about
| how they want to die before the time is upon them.
|
| Major problem in the US. See it every day at my job.
| zackkatz wrote:
| This article doesn't really address statistics for younger
| people. I feel like the headline should be: should elderly people
| be given CPR? For me the answer is a strong no. Why on Earth
| would you give CPR to a 90-year old person!?
|
| > survival after out-of-hospital CPR dropped from 6.7% for
| patients in their 70s to just 2.4% for those over 90
| boringg wrote:
| What's the point of this article? Are we trying to get rid of CPR
| now so that people don't bother doing it because it has a low
| success rate? It is literally a last desperate effort to save
| someone in a really bad situation.
|
| I don't think anyone is under the allusion that CPR has like a
| 95% success rate do they?
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Doing CPR is scary and hard, and if it's okay to teach people
| that while it probably won't work, it won't make things worse,
| and if you're lucky it'll save a life.
|
| Transparency is a small kindness to help the people who do CPR
| not beat themselves up when it (probably) fails.
|
| *illusion (sorry)
| groestl wrote:
| I think the risk that people don't even start if they worry
| about survival rates is higher.
| henry2023 wrote:
| > it won't make things worse
|
| Maybe you should read the article.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| One of the preconditions for CPR treatment is that the
| patient has no heartbeat. The patient is dead, or going to
| be dead (depending on how you define dead) very shortly
| without CPR.
|
| So, while the side effects of CPR can be pretty bad, not
| receiving CPR means guaranteed death.
|
| That's what people mean when they say it won't make things
| worse.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| The title of the article is "A 'natural death' may be
| preferable for many than enduring CPR".
|
| Living bit longer, likely with your original problem,
| plus newly busted ribs and scared out of your mind, may
| well be worse than death today.
|
| If I have advanced cancer or dementia, or terrible
| injuries, and my heart stops, please leave me be.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| I would recommend reading the article.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Make people aware that performing CPR on terminally ill people
| is not self-evidently a good idea. See "A 'natural death' may
| be preferable for many than enduring CPR" which is a title.
|
| > She has written about performing chest compressions on a
| frail, elderly patient and feeling his ribs crack like twigs.
| She found herself wishing she were "holding his hand in his
| last dying moments, instead of crushing his sternum." She told
| me that she's had nightmares about it. She described noticing
| his eyes, which were open, while she was performing CPR. Blood
| spurted out of his endotracheal tube with each compression.
|
| > "I felt like I was doing harm to him," she told me. "I felt
| like he deserved a more dignified death."
| boringg wrote:
| Agree completely - in that instance the individual should
| have some kind of DNR bracelet. That burden falls on the
| communication of the individual to wear something indicating
| DNR or requires an assessment at the time by the first
| responder to decide it isn't worth trying to save the
| individual and provide comfort instead.
|
| I think that assessment by a first responder is a very
| difficult decision to put on someone.
| yarg wrote:
| Survival rates aside, CPR on the elderly can be particularly
| brutal.
|
| CPR is basically beating the crap out of someone in order to
| drag them back from death.
|
| You're talking about inflicting serious damage on people who
| take damage more easily, struggle to recover and are
| significantly more likely to suffer medical complications from
| even minor injuries.
|
| We like to place human life in an echelon of the sacred above
| all other life - and sometimes this leads to us being kinder to
| our pets than we are to ourselves.
|
| A healthcare system that prioritises quality over quantity of
| life could yield better results, but that's not going to happen
| as long as things are controlled by a gluttonous hydra of an
| industry that has a fiduciary duty to its stockholders, but no
| real duty of care to the patients.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I don't think anyone is under the allusion that CPR has like
| a 95% success rate do they?
|
| When I was first taught CPR in school, it was taught without
| any reference to the survival statistics. The impression I got
| was that it was very effective.
|
| I don't know about 95% success rate, but I'd bet a lot of
| people think it has at least a 70% success rate.
| querez wrote:
| When I was thought it, it was clearly pointed out to me that
| chance of survival is ~5%, but increases significantly if an
| AED can be used in time. I've also been told about the rib
| cracking etc. Just as a counterpoint.
| basisword wrote:
| What use is this information though to someone performing
| CPR? It's important in the sense that maybe better techniques
| can be developed but if I need CPR it doesn't matter one bit
| if the person doing it knows it's success rate. In fact
| probably better they don't know. If they know the odds are
| low perhaps they'll give up too soon.
| WJW wrote:
| I could see an argument that knowing the statistics could
| help the CPR-giver in the aftermath. After all the patient
| is _very_ likely to die and if the CPR-giver was under the
| impression that it is likely to work, then they may feel a
| lot of unwarranted guilt.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| I was taught it was not terribly effective except in case of
| lightning strike. We weren't taught how to do it in
| Mountaineering-Oriented First Aid because of that, and
| because the leadership, wound care, trauma, and specific
| conditions aspects of the course took almost the whole three
| days.
| yarg wrote:
| I know a dude who's a very competent ambo, he saw a man
| collapse and immediately rebooted his heart with a single
| perfect strike to the chest.
|
| Beyond the prior state of the patient, technique can actually
| matter as well - but the fact is that the vast majority of
| people are never going to develop skills beyond "ah ah ah ah
| staying alive".
| BloominOnion wrote:
| Sounds like he administered a precordial thump.
| asperous wrote:
| The article links a source and says "In real life, people
| similarly believe that survival after CPR is over 75%"
| bscphil wrote:
| The real problem with the article is that it's conflating two
| things: the absolute rate of survival for cardiac arrest
| after CPR, and the relative rate of survival for cardiac
| arrest after CPR (versus doing nothing).
|
| > In real life, people similarly believe that survival after
| CPR is over 75%.
|
| I'm just a medically ignorant rando, my naive guess was that
| people survive cardiac arrest without intervention 30% of the
| time (per the article, the actual rate is 7.6%). Unless you
| measure people's beliefs about this, you won't be able to
| determine whether 75% is a good rate or a bad one.
|
| Apparently bystander initiated CPR, out of the hospital,
| increases those odds to 10%. That means that a _third_ more
| people will survive if bystanders initiate CPR. That seems
| ... really good to me? In the hospital, survival after CPR
| goes up to 17%, which is an increase of 2.2 times! It 's
| actually pretty comparable to someone having naive guesses of
| 75% CPR survival vs 30% without CPR. (My actual guess was
| that CPR made a difference about 20% of the time, so _all_
| these numbers are way better than that.)
| beams_of_light wrote:
| I guess we're in a state where any reporting is meant to change
| behaviors?
| George83728 wrote:
| When the American Red Cross trained me in CPR, they told me
| this statistic, and told me that the reason they told me this
| was so that I wouldn't blame myself if the victim dies anyway
| (the most likely outcome.)
| jeffrallen wrote:
| This was true in a recent Swiss training as well.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| They link a study where they polled people shortly after a
| family member was admitted to the ICU about the effectiveness
| of CPR.
|
| My partner is a nurse, so I already knew that the odds of
| community-delivered CPR were about 10% (although now I'm
| curious how those odds change when an AED is available) and
| about the cracking of ribs.
|
| I think what this article could've emphasized more is that more
| people should learn about and consider Advance Directives and
| DNR (do not resuscitate orders), particularly for patients who
| are nearing the end of their natural life.
|
| As it reads now it seems to suggest that bystanders should not
| bother doing CPR in the community, which I think is incorrect
| and borderline dangerous advice.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > (although now I'm curious how those odds change when an AED
| is available)
|
| AEDs are fucking magical.
|
| They even talk to you to tell you how to use them.
|
| If the need arises, get the AED and get going.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Isn't an AED only useful for tachycardia? I'm case of
| drowning, heart attack, or most other causes of a stopped
| heart, it isn't useful, correct?
| tux3 wrote:
| I think AEDs can also pace these days if it's brady (but
| not asystole)
| tialaramex wrote:
| The AED does not restart hearts, it can't do that, the
| shock disrupts an abnormal rhythm, allowing the restart
| to potentially take place automatically. But if your
| heart has _actually_ just outright stopped, you are
| basically dead.
|
| Clinicians report as little as zero success for patients
| in asystole (ie their heart has plain stopped). Some
| studies report a little higher, but it's also possible
| those rates are mistaken diagnosis, ie you see a flat-
| looking ECG, you treat anyway, maybe 1% of patients
| survive - but maybe that 1% were actually not really in
| asystole.
|
| If you have a heart attack, both an AED and CPR are
| inappropriate, your heart is still working it's just that
| the blood isn't going where it's needed. You need
| immediate medical treatment. While an actual cardiac
| arrest (which would warrant an AED and CPR) is much more
| likely during a heart attack, it is not inevitable and
| these treatments are _not_ prophylactic. Meanwhile your
| focus needs to be on alerting other people to your
| problem, so that they can get you medical treatment, and
| if you do go into cardiac arrest they can perform CPR or
| use an AED once that becomes appropriate.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > you see a flat-looking ECG, you treat anyway, maybe 1%
| of patients survive - but maybe that 1% were actually not
| really in asystole.
|
| Isn't that basically the no true Scotsman fallacy?
| tedunangst wrote:
| False positive paradox.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Maybe?
|
| Sometimes, when our measurements differ from what we can
| explain with our understanding of the universe, that's
| because we didn't understand the universe properly. If
| you put the Sun in the middle, your model of the solar
| system is still weird nonsense with planets on their
| circular orbits needing to swing backwards or accelerate
| forwards for no reason - until you make the orbits
| _ellipses_ instead and then it 's almost like fucking
| clockwork.
|
| But sometimes, you were just right, and the measurements
| were off a bit, and there was no real physical
| phenomenon, you were just bad at measuring.
|
| So, maybe sometimes the human heart does actually stop,
| yet it can successfully be restarted and then carry on as
| normal, and the circumstances where this is true are just
| fairly uncommon and when people are peering very
| carefully at the results they never ran into one of these
| rare cases. I cannot rule that out.
| User23 wrote:
| Right. Doing nothing has a near zero recovery rate for cardiac
| arrest.
|
| Any intervention needs to be judged against the real
| alternatives and not some imaginary ideal case.
| williamDafoe wrote:
| The real point of CPR is to bridge their life while you rush to
| get them an AED. Without the AED the chance of their heart
| restarting permanently is vanishingly low ... Last few times I
| had first responder training it was said to be less than 15%
| chance of survival for a patient given CPR, and you'll only hear
| about this if you ask.
|
| The last time I had first responder training the guy sitting next
| to me was drowned by a surfing accident but it was his great
| fortune that on shore there was a national expert giving rapid
| water rescue training and they had this guy out of the water and
| his heart restarted in 5 minutes. So that is why he was taking
| first responder training himself!
| User23 wrote:
| Thumpversion sometimes works too. Interestingly it was also
| invented by Dr. Bernard Lown, who is best known for inventing
| the DC defibrillator.
| robbiep wrote:
| It almost never works, unless you are seeing a witnessed
| cardiac arrest and know how to administer. That is the right
| 'indication' for a precordial thump, but the success rate is
| still terrible.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I didn't know about the low success rate of CPR, but I have been
| very well aware of the potential damage. When I was a paramedic
| (as an alternative to military service) I once had to perform CPR
| to an old lady and I heard her rips crack. One of the worst
| experiences in those 9 months...
| markoman wrote:
| You're kinda burying the lede here... Was this woman
| resuscitated by your efforts and do you know how long she
| survived afterwards?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| *and with what quality of life did she survive?
|
| If I am 85 years old, maybe it is better for me to move on.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| CPR + Old Lady + Not in a hospital = Almost certainly didn't
| survive, or live well if she did.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I got from lifeguard training. The best
| chance of doing anything positive with it is going to be on
| an otherwise young and healthy person whose heart stopped
| due to a very unusual trauma.
|
| And CPR and artificial respiration is never a miraculous
| eyes-opening recovery like in the movies-- it's pretty much
| just putting oxygen in the brain to buy a few extra minutes
| for the ambulance to arrive and take over.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Correct :-(
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I'm sure you did everything you could, the sad fact of
| life is that eventually it ends.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Ah, sorry! I heard afterwards that she was declared dead when
| she arrived in the hospital...
| lkbm wrote:
| I was taught that if you aren't breaking ribs, you're doing it
| wrong.
| karagenit wrote:
| I don't think that's right. Sometimes the cartilage will
| break which can sound similar, but broken ribs is a serious
| condition that can lead to internal bleeding and such.
|
| > Broken ribs are present in 3% of those who survive to
| hospital discharge, and 15% of those who die in the hospital
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitatio.
| ..
| contingencies wrote:
| I was taught you are supposed to break the cartilage.
| mjevans wrote:
| Salient data from the article:
|
| TL;DR CPR slightly increases the odds for someone otherwise
| healthy and young but is much less effective for the old and the
| chronically ill.
|
| IIRC from prior CPR classes (own life data), 'correctly done'
| chest compressions are extremely violent, they often break ribs
| to get that compression of the heart between the rib cage and
| spine. It's a last-ditch effort with COSTS. If there's an AED
| around to use instead that would be FAR more preferable.
|
| """ But the true odds are grim. In 2010 a review of 79 studies,
| involving almost 150,000 patients, found that the overall rate of
| survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest had barely changed
| in thirty years. It was 7.6%.
|
| Bystander-initiated CPR may increase those odds to 10%. Survival
| after CPR for in-hospital cardiac arrest is slightly better, but
| still only about 17%. The numbers get even worse with age. A
| study in Sweden found that survival after out-of-hospital CPR
| dropped from 6.7% for patients in their 70s to just 2.4% for
| those over 90. Chronic illness matters too. One study found that
| less than 2% of patients with cancer or heart, lung, or liver
| disease were resuscitated with CPR and survived for six months.
| """
| starwatch wrote:
| > 'correctly done' chest compressions are extremely violent.
|
| For a good visual of this take a look at a LUCAS machine in
| operation [1]. I'm a (retained) firefighter and have seen
| paramedics deploy a LUCAS - it's quite a thing to behold.
|
| > If there's an AED around to use instead that would be FAR
| more preferable.
|
| Sadly AED's aren't always appropriate. They need a "shockable
| rhythm" - that is if your heart is in ventricular tachycardia
| or ventricular fibrillation [2].
|
| One interesting fact I recall reading (source long forgotten
| ...) is that collapsed women are less likely to be helped with
| AED's by passers by. This is because they feel uncomfortable
| uncovering the chest to apply the AED pads.
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/G-oPJV1LYaE?t=314
|
| [2]: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-
| arrhyth...
| deanCommie wrote:
| Holy shit...
|
| I had _read_ that chest compressions for CPR are much more
| aggressive than people imagine and rips being broken is not
| uncommon.
|
| The first few seconds of that clip though made me physically
| wince with discomfort... wow!
| EA-3167 wrote:
| This is sadly true, a friend and colleague of mine passed
| away about 7 years ago from sudden cardiac arrest. There was
| an AED in the building, but unfortunately he was in asystole,
| nothing there to shock.
|
| Having said that AED's do save a lot of lives, but like CPR
| they aren't magic.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| I swear this comes up every 2-5 years. It's insanely violent,
| doesn't work as well on the elderly (like literally everything
| else), and is still better than nothing. Things like this
| almost feel like fear bait. It's intuitive that a procedure
| performed on someone who's dying is ALWAYS going to be less
| effective on the elderly. So long as it's not killing more
| people than it helps (extremely unlikely given the whole
| "you're not breathing/your heart has stopped" qualifier) it's
| still an important thing to know.
| henry2023 wrote:
| About 93% of the time it's worst than nothing.
| mjevans wrote:
| For bystanders, the raw numbers from the article reflect a
| 7.6% survival rate became a 10% survival rate. An absolute
| improvement in about 24 out of 1000 cases, though for those
| that do 'survive' maybe a 33% increase?
|
| Though those numbers strongly hint at over simplified
| variables. Is there other medical help available? (E.G. an
| AED, maybe combined with CPR?) Is EMS close? Are they near
| a medivac capable landing site and a level 1 trauma center?
| How does this change across patient demographics?
|
| For my own health, this goes back to end of life management
| questions, can I recover or even improve to a degree if a
| procedure is done? As someone with hopefully decades and
| maybe even a chance at upload or archival if I live long
| enough CPR probably is worth it for the cases where
| survival is improved; but only if all the other options are
| exhausted first.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The doing nothing treatment leads to death 100% of the time
| since you don't do CPR on people with a beating heart.
| pessimizer wrote:
| _Slightly_ worse than nothing; saves a tiny bit of exercise
| for someone. 7% of the time it saves a life.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Quality of life is not a boolean variable. "CPR-induced
| consciousness" sounds like a truly terrible way to go, and
| likely to cause real suffering in the practitioner/torturer.
| frederikvs wrote:
| > If there's an AED around to use instead that would be FAR
| more preferable.
|
| AEDs still require chest compressions. In fact, they'll give
| you rhythm to follow and talk you through it.
|
| I would expect a very similar rate of injuries from
| compressions - perhaps a bit less if the AED means the
| compressions don't need to be performed for the same length of
| time.
| hnthrowaway8860 wrote:
| If you are ever in the situation, what will you do?
|
| I will certainly peform CPR. Even after reading the article.
| Why? Most likely the person is dead anyway, no harm done. But
| if I don't do it, chances are their family sue me for millions.
| Especially in the US. Unlikely to succeed, but the risk is far
| from 0. If they win, my life is ruined. I the face of that, I
| might even consider a settlement for a large sum. Also
| terrible. So yeah, sorry old ladies.
|
| Such articles, a much as I appreciate the educative effects,
| could even make this worse, since if it's more widely known
| then I could get sued in either case. Like, I did CPR, lady
| dies anyway but there were clear signs that she suffered.
| Great, now I'll have a lawsuit in addition to the trauma of
| having crushed the ribs of an old lady.
| mjevans wrote:
| I'm not really fit enough to compress properly, nor have I
| been in CPR training recently.
|
| In an emergency my support role would be better spent on
| comms support or managing other trauma.
| asdfjasgoinio wrote:
| [dead]
| three14 wrote:
| Complete anecdata, but a few months ago a neighbor of mine
| successfully resuscitated another neighbor with CPR. There was an
| AED present, but from what I heard, it did not recommend a shock.
| The person who collapsed is around 70 years old. Sometimes, it
| does work! There clearly are some cases where it would be crazy
| not to try it.
| dheera wrote:
| I'm a survivor of cardiac arrest and was resuscitated with an AED
| and CPR. I've gone through a lot but I'm glad to be alive, have
| an implanted ICD now, and I'm glad some employee didn't refuse to
| do CPR on me.
|
| I wasn't conscious for the event and the entire following week,
| but they didn't break any of my ribs. Maybe the AED allowed them
| to be less violent.
| zahma wrote:
| Sounds like you were fortunate to have multiple people around,
| an AED nearby, and someone well-trained. You're probably right
| that AED helped prevent physical damage, though that may also
| be due to good technique and or your anatomy. The sooner that
| the AED goes on and restarts sinus rhythm, the fewer
| compressions required.
|
| Happy to hear you are doing better.
| dheera wrote:
| Yep it happened at a boat race, so there were paramedics
| already on-site. On one hand I was told to avoid competitive-
| intensity sports in the future, but I was also super
| fortunate that it all played out at a boat race and not while
| climbing some mountain. And having the ICD means I can still
| hike non-strenuous mountains.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I was dead on the street at 15 after being hit by a car (my
| fault). A good Samaritan stopped, administered CPR and
| resuscitated me. Forty six years later and I never got to thank
| him. I only know his first name (Mark).
|
| CPR is a good thing and hopefully this article will not make
| people think twice before administering it.
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