Early bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and dispatch assisted CPR
Immediate initiation of CPR can double or triple survival from cardiac arrest.
This remains a focus of the latest European Resuscitation Guidelines.1
Dispatcher assisted bystander CPR (DA-CPR) is gaining greater traction with the increase of emergency medical dispatchers being trained to recognise cardiac arrest and instruct bystanders to initiate resuscitation whilst awaiting the arrival of professional help1. A recent systematic review by Nikalaou et al. of 33 observational studies found that in system-level and patient-level comparisons, the provision of DA-CPR compared with no DA-CPR was consistently associated with improved outcome across all analyses. These findings were consistent across sensitivity analyses and the pediatric sub-group. It should be noted that the evidence certainty across all outcomes was assessed as low or very low.2