A Better Way To Restart Hearts

August 30, 2004
An overweight man walking ahead of you clutches his chest and falls to the floor. If you have been trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) you know exactly what to do. Sadly, most bystanders can only dial 911 and wring their hands while waiting for an Emergency Medical Service (EMS) team.

In Tucson, Ariz., events play out differently. As the result of a community-wide public educational program, many residents here are ready to save lives by applying a streamlined form of CPR.

The basic idea behind traditional CPR is to move oxygen into the lungs with mouth-to-mouth breathing and to move blood through the lungs and circulatory system with chest compressions. "We thought weˇ¦|?d figured out how it worked," says Dr. Robert A. Berg, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Arizona who helped develop the new technique. But then it became apparent that there was more to be learned.

What Berg and his colleagues discovered was that the mouth-to-mouth part of the procedure is counterproductive. During the 15 seconds chest compressions are interrupted, blood oxygen levels begin to fall markedly. Maintaining a steady pace of 100 compressions per minute furnishes the heart and brain with more oxygen than if the tempo were interrupted for mouth-to-mouth breathing. The university shared its finding with the cityˇ¦|?s initially skeptical EMS unit.

"They had to sell the science of this to us. They had to prove it hands down," Joe Gulotta, Deputy Chief of EMS for the Tucson Fire Department, tells POPULAR MECHANICS.

Convincing evidence came from a study of people who were taught either standard CPR or chest-compressions-only CPR. "The people in the [standard CPR] group were so bludgeoned with information that they were paralyzed," says Dr. Karl B. Kern of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at University Medical Center. He is the coordinator of the Sarver Heart Centerˇ¦|?s CPR Research Group in Tucson.

"I believe this will become the universal standard," says Gulotta.