In other health news, a new study compares ways of saving patients with cardiac arrest. Sudden cardiac arrest is when the heart develops an abnormal rhythm and stops beating.
An analysis of four studies found no difference in short-term survival when rescuers followed current guidelines. These call for defibrillation as soon as possible. A defibrillator is the device used to shock the heart back to normal rhythm.
But there was a small increase in long-term survival among those who received chest compressions before defibrillation. This was true one year after cardiac arrest, and especially if there were delays in the arrival of emergency medical services.
Doctor Pascal Meier of the University of Michigan Health System led an international study of one thousand five hundred patients.
PASCAL MEIER: "What we wanted to test is whether it would be better to start first with good quality chest compressions to prepare the heart for this electrical shock -- to get some blood circulation to the brain and heart before we apply the shock."
Dr. Meier says people should start to give compressions immediately if emergency help has not arrived. He says good quality compressions are done in the middle of the chest.
PASCAL MEIER: "On the breast bone, usually about two fingers above the lower end of the chest bone, you put your both hands and then you have to straighten your arms and do pretty strong compressions there."
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25