CPR certification

CPR certification can save lives - we know that. If someone has a cardiac arrest and the bystanders do nothing the chances are the person will die. But if someone performs the kiss of life, they could still die! Recent research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that patients who receive the kiss of life are not more likely to live than if someone performs chest compressions only. The study reviewed 4000 victims of cardiac arrest and investigated whether they had received CPR, what type i.e. from a non medical person or the EMT, how they fared and whether they lived. The conclusion was that chest compressions worked and were in fact more effective than CPR performed using both mouth to mouth and rescue breaths. Making people do mouth to mouth is costing lives and not just in the situations covered in the research. The fact is that people don't want to kiss strangers and this is putting them off learning vital life saving skills. Also when the general public do CPR they often get the rescue breath bit wrong anyway. So what can be done instead?

The simple facts are:

·         Way too many people die unnecessarily after suffering a cardiac arrest. It is estimated about 300,000 people die every year in the US alone- that number  is unacceptable.

·         The general public are afraid of infection and it appears that no amount of advertising is going to change their minds.

·         Even if infection wasn't an issue people are worried about bad breath and kissing other people. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

·         We need more people to learn basic life saving skills and obtain their CPR certification.

So we need to take advantage of the recent research if it means  more people not only gain these life saving skills but will actually use them on the streets of the USA.

So what does this mean? The new research and probably soon to be guidelines suggest that chest only compressions done correctly will save lives. You still need to learn how to do it properly but in the event of a tragedy doing something is better than nothing. Watch the video mentioned below to find out how easy it is to do CPR only using chest compressions. This works and it removes all requirement for kissing strangers. Now people there are no more excuses why everyone shouldn't book their CPR classes today!