March 19, 2007 – It is better to give continuous chest compressions to victims of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) than to provide conventional cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), according to a new study published in The Lancet. Researchers Ken Nagao, MD, and his colleagues from Surugadai Nihon University Hospital in Tokyo, reached this conclusion after evaluating 4,241 cases of SCA occurring among adult patients in the Kanto region of Japan during a recent 16-month period.

When researchers looked at the subgroup of patients whose arrests were witnessed by bystanders and who had a shockable heart rhythm when emergency responders arrived, they found that 22 percent of the 439 patients who received chest compressions only survived with good neurological function, compared with 10 percent of the 712 patients who received a combination of chest compressions and ventilations. They also concluded that any CPR was better than no CPR.