According to some studies of the outcomes of patients in need of resuscitation who have had CPR performed on them (as opposed to a defibrillator or whatever), approximately 3 percent had what I would call a "favorable" outcome, living at least another month. Another 3 percent also lived, but in what is commonly referred to as a vegetative state, and a couple percent further had an outcome somewhere in between, not quite as bad as the second group but not really in good shape. The other 92 percent just died. Other studies are slightly more optimistic, but only slightly.
This is in sharp contrast to the way that CPR is promoted, and even more so compared to the way that it is portrayed in the media, where it has a roughly 75% chance of completely saving a person's life with no major ill effects.
On the plus side, some of the things they're doing with
automated defibrillators (the ones that you see in public buildings) are pretty amazing. So hopefully, CPR will slowly become a less and less necessary skill.
Primary source: http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2013/jan/15/bitter-end/Secondary sources: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199606133342406 for study on media protrayalshttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2751179?dopt=Abstract for one study on survivability
CPR is a solution sold on the basis of the seriousness of the problem, not because it's effective.
ReplyDeleteAnd I suppose on a cost effectiveness basis, even 8 percent could be justified on the grounds that as medical procedures go, teaching people CPR is cheap.
And I wonder if there are any studies correlating the effectiveness of CPR with the type and extent of the training of the people who practice it?
A lot of the studies that were the ultimate sources of the above factoid had specific contexts (age of victim, response time of paramedics, etc.), so the 8% figure is a sort of meta-analysis conclusion. Also remember that even the 8% is only a "survives at least an additional month in some fashion" criterion, and that only 2-3% return to normal lives. That's still 2 or 3 people out of every hundred better than doing nothing, I expect, but it's not great. Actually, one thing that was mentioned but not quantified was the number of patients whose prognoses were adversely affected by the CPR (due to the all too common side effects like broken ribs).
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