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Saturday, October 10, 2015

It's happening...

1. Dr. Perez's and my paper that proved that use of heel compression quadrupled the number of people who could perform guideline-compliant chest compression for ten minutes. What makes this even more interesting is that we didn't use the traditional cohort of fifty medical students or 50 interns. Rather, we used a mix of males and females whose age distribution approximated that of cardiac arrest victims. This paper was published online by the American Journal of Emergency Medicine within eight days of their having received it and in print within sixty days! That's pretty speedy turnaround for a peer review journal.

2. The publication of this work gives the AHA what it needs to evaluate publishing the technique in their bystander classes.

3. One medical first responder agency has changed their protocol to include "If a First Responder is alone with the victim and cannot achieve guideline-compliant chest compression ("GC3s") using manual chest compression, the First Responder shall use Heel Compression until someone arrives who can perform GC3s. In any event the LUCAS shall be applied as soon as possible and without any interruption of more than ten seconds."

4. For a demonstration of the technique, see http://www.slicc.org/ClassVideo and click on the adult CPR link.

5. The Abstract of the article in AELM is free and can be found at
http://www.ajemjournal.com/article/S0735-6757%2815%2900560-4/abstract