02 Mar Better Bystander CPR Training Needed, AHA Says
Outcomes for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest remain low, especially in ethnic neighborhoods, because educational messages about bystander CPR aren’t getting through — in part because they’re not tailored to the audience receiving them, according to an advisory from the American Heart Association (AHA).
Survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest vary geographically from 16% in Seattle to 0.2% in Detroit, according to the advisory, which was published in the Feb. 25 issue of Circulation. Bystanders provide CPR only 25% of the time, and 15% of all deaths in the U.S. each year come from the 360,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.