Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation may not save more lives

Chest compressions performed by bystanders work just as well to save the lives of unconscious people compared with the better known combined technique of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with heart massage, new studies show.

The findings are likely to influence a revision of international guidelines this year.

They are the best evidence yet that untrained people's attempts at resuscitation are at least as effective if they exclude breathing into the collapsed person's lungs - probably because this distracts them from working on the heart. In the studies, of nearly 2000 people in Washington state in the US and and 1300 people in Sweden, bystanders called ambulance dispatchers who were randomly assigned to instruct them how to carry out one of the two techniques.

Neither found any significant difference in the likelihood the person would survive.

The research is the first to compare how people fare when their revival attempt is made according to specific instructions for one method or the other.

Previous studies have measured the survival of those resuscitated using the techniques, but the results could have been skewed, for example, if people attempting mouth-to-mouth felt more confident about their resuscitation skills.

Ian Jacobs, the chairman of the Australian Resuscitation Council, said the results were consistent with national guidelines that people who do not feel able or willing to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation should consider doing chest compressions alone - at a rate of 100 per minute and to a depth of about 5 centimetres.

''Only 40 per cent of people who collapse receive any resuscitation. Sixty per cent have nothing done,'' said Professor Jacobs. It was important to reassure the public that chest compressions could not harm an unconscious person, even if they had a pulse, he said.

Professor Jacobs called for resuscitation to become part of the school curriculum. ''These are life-saving skills and would take half an hour of the school term,'' he said.

The new Australian and New Zealand guidelines, to be released in December, are expected to follow those of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation, of which the council is a member.

LNK

Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation may not save more lives

Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation may not save more lives

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