http://www.docguide.com/news/content.nsf/news/852571020057CCF68525734E004BB174?Open&id=48DDE4A73E09A969852568880078C249&count=10WEST LAFAYETTE, IN -- September 6, 2007 -- A biomedical engineer at Purdue University has developed a new method to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation that promises to be more effective than standard CPR because it increases nourishing blood flow through the heart by 25% over the current method.
A new technique is desperately needed because conventional CPR has a success rate of 5% to 10%, depending on how fast rescuers are able to respond and how well the procedure is performed. For every one minute of delay, the resuscitation rate decreases by 10%.
"In other words, at 10 minutes, the resuscitation is absolutely ineffective," said Leslie Geddes, Showalter Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Purdue's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. "Any medical procedure that had that low a success rate would be abandoned right away. But the alternative is not very good, either: Don't do CPR and the person is going to die."
Geddes has developed the first new CPR alternative, called "only rhythmic abdominal compression," or OAC-CPR, which works by pushing on the abdomen instead of the chest.
"There are major problems with standard CPR," Geddes said. "One is the risk of breaking ribs if you push too hard, but if you don't push hard you won't save the person. Another problem is the risk of transferring infection with mouth-to-mouth breathing."
The new CPR method eliminates both risks, Geddes said.
Findings will be detailed in a research paper appearing this month in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, published by Elsevier Inc. The paper was authored by Geddes and his Purdue colleagues Ann E. Rundell, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering doctoral student Aaron Lottes, and basic medical sciences graduate students Andre Kemeny and Michael Otlewski.
In standard chest-compression CPR, which has been in practice since the 1960s, the rescuer pushes on the chest and blows into the subject's mouth twice for every 30 chest compressions. However, the risk of infection is so grave that many doctors and nurses often refuse to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. In one 1993 study of 433 doctors and 152 nurses, 45% of doctors and 80% of nurses said they would refuse to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a stranger.
"This is the real world that nobody knows about, and it's a sobering thought," Geddes said.
OAC-CPR eliminates the need to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
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