Trial of Continuous or Interrupted Chest Compressions during CPR.

Background: During cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, the interruption of manual chest compressions for rescue breathing reduces blood flow and possibly survival. We assessed whether outcomes after continuous compressions with positive-pressure ventilation differed from those after compressions that were interrupted for ventilations at a ratio of 30 compressions to two ventilations.

Methods: This cluster-randomized trial with crossover included 114 emergency medical service (EMS) agencies.

Classification of cardiopulmonary resuscitation chest compression patterns: manual versus automated approaches.

Objectives: New chest compression detection technology allows for the recording and graphical depiction of clinical cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) chest compressions. The authors sought to determine the inter-rater reliability of chest compression pattern classifications by human raters. Agreement with automated chest compression classification was also evaluated by computer analysis.