New one on me!

[firetender]

According to this article

http://news.yahoo.com/prolonging-cpr-doesnt-help-heart-patients-study-210400521.html

there has been a debate going on about prolonging CPR before administering cardioversion. Yes, I'm from the Stone Age, but I don't recall anyone saying to delay administration of defibrillation for three minutes because CPR for an extended period of time helps.

Did I miss something?

And it makes me wonder who had the bright idea to deny the patients immediate access to defib. just so they could see if their guesswork was right.

There's more on my Blog, HERE.

 

[starkel]

Most CPR protocols, that I know of, state that unless it is a witnessed arrest you should do a round of CPR before defibrillating to get O2 back in the system. We do CPR while the officer does respirations and the other medic hooks up the life pack and analyze ASAP. Either which way I have only heard of 2 people surviving CPR and their quality of life was lacking after. I agree with you on the guess work otherwise why would the AHA change the CPR guidelines so frequently, the newest being skip respirations and go straight into compressions. In the end they are just that "guidelines" and your MD has the final say.

 

[jjesusfreak01]

If i've got an AED, then the pads will be put on concurrently with the first round of CPR. When the AED feels like shocking, it gets to. I don't believe in unnecessary delays to CPR or defib.

 

[mycrofft]

Once the machine says "CLEAR", CPR is going to stop.

While I applaud many of the algorithm changes made by ARC, the "CPR before AED" thing seems wrong, like a Friday evening let's get home type deal. Of course, we try to slice action into learnable non-simultaneous bits, then start believing our own scripting.

"21-22-23-"
"Stand clear, shock advised"
"27-2O-OWWW!:wacko:-30, breath breath..."

 

[Handsome Robb]

If the heart is in fibrillation no blood is being circulated and there is little to no blood in the ventricles themselves. When you defibrillate the heart it contracts, but there is nothing in the heart for it to pump.

Think of it like a water pump, if the pump isn't primed, you can turn it on all you want but its not going to move any water.

CPR for 2 minutes helps fill and perfuse the heart as well as the brain and other organs to give yourself a better chance of getting the heart to convert into a perfusing rhythm when defibrillation is delivered.

The way I was taught is if you see Fine Ventricular Fibrillation the pt gets a round of CPR then reanalyze and if indicated defibrillate. If Course V-Fib is on the monitor, "light em up" haha.