Cardiac arrest survival rates remain low despite increased access to advanced cardiac life support. Survival from cardiac arrest is, at least in part, related to the perfusion pressures and blood flow achieved during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). A number of alternative CPR devices have been developed that aim to improve the perfusion pressures and/or blood flow achieved during CPR. Acti...

The earliest documentation of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) dates to the Old Testament, which describes how the prophet Elisha resuscitated an apparently dead child by blowing air into his mouth.(1) Modern CPR began in 1960 with the landmark study by Kouwenhoven, Jude, and Knickerbocker, which reported combining closed chest compression, mouth-to-mouth breathing, and external defibrillati...

Received: December 6, 2012 Accepted for publication: January 4, 2012 From the Department of Emergency Medicine, Tainan Municipal Hospital, Tainan, Taiwan Department of Surgery, Intensive Care Medicine, Chi Mei Medical Center, Liouying, Tainan, Taiwan Department of Nursing, Min-Hwei College of Health Care Management, Tainan, Taiwan Address reprint requests and correspondence: Dr. Chien-Ming Chao...

BACKGROUND Three-fourths of cardiac arrest survivors die before hospital discharge or suffer significant neurological injury. Except for therapeutic hypothermia and revascularization, no novel therapies have been developed that improve survival or cardiac and neurological function after resuscitation. Nitrite (NO(2)(-)) increases cellular resilience to focal ischemia/reperfusion injury in multi...

BACKGROUND Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a life-saving technique which is used after cardiopulmonary arrest. Chance of survival after arrest will increase if it is coupled with sufficient knowledge. Final year undergraduate health science students and interns manage many trauma and critically ill patients in our hospital. Even though all students took CPR training in undergraduate cour...

BACKGROUND Survival after surgical embolectomy for massive postcesarean pulmonary embolism causing sustained cardiac arrest is rare. CASE One day after an uneventful cesarean delivery, a woman developed cardiac asystole and apnea due to pulmonary embolism. Femoral-femoral cardiopulmonary bypass performed during continuous cardiopulmonary resuscitation allowed a successful embolectomy. Upon aw...