Chest compression using the foot or hand method: a prospective, randomized, controlled manikin study with school children.

Objective: Maintaining a chest compression depth of 5 cm or more as specified by resuscitation guidelines is difficult. Historical studies have shown an advantage of the foot method (FM) over the hand method (HM) in participants weighing less than 50 kg. Because of the fact that the importance of chest compression is increasing from guideline to guideline, the FM technique had not been evaluated conclusively and worldwide resuscitation is taught to school children, we investigated whether school children achieved a higher quality of chest compression with the FM than with the HM.