Bystander CPR and Defibrillation Are Associated with Improved Survival

After many decades of abysmal — and unchanging — rates of survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), two innovations hold promise. First, the automated external defibrillator (AED) has made bystander defibrillation possible. Second, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) has become more evidence-based, with an emphasis on compressions instead of ventilation. In addition, efforts to educate the public to perform CPR have been increasingly robust. Now, two large observational studies add to the evidence that these efforts have paid off.

Using a Japanese registry, researchers studied nearly 168,000 cases of bystander-witnessed OHCA of presumed primary cardiac etiology from 2005 to 2012. Japan expanded access to AEDs in 2004. During the s…