How to save a child's life

(Monkey Business Images)

A new study to be published online by The Lancet, a leading medical journal, shows "cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) by bystanders can improve survival of children who have cardiac arrest."

The study was led by Taku Iwami, MD, PhD at Kyoto University Health Service in Japan, and found that "unlike previous studies that were underpowered to show this important association, our study is sufficiently large to identify the important beneficial effect of bystander CPR on survival outcomes after paediatric cardiac arrest."

Iwami and the team of researchers explained, "our data lead us to lend support to a double CPR training strategy: compression-only CPR training for most people to increase bystander CPR by bystanders, and conventional CPR (chest compression plus rescue breathing) training for individuals who are most likely to witness children who have cardiac arrests with non-cardiac causes, such as medical professionals, lifeguards, school teachers, families with children, and families with swimming pools."

The key point of the study is that "chest compression plus ventilation should continue to be the standard, a technique that should be taught to the whole population."

CPR is simple to learn and there are a number of training and certification courses widely available at hospitals, schools, fire stations and community centers.

CPR consists of three simple steps, explained here: http://depts.washington.edu/learncpr/quickcpr.html

Full article: http://press.thelancet.com/cpr.pdf