Gasping During Cardiac Arrest Is Associated with Improved Survival

Early and uninterrupted bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation is often critical to patient survival after cardiac arrest. However, the presence of agonal or gasping respirations might delay recognition of arrest and, therefore, delay initiation of CPR. Researchers retrospectively reviewed cardiac arrest reports from Arizona emergency medical services systems to assess the frequency of gasping respirations in adults with out-of-hospital nontraumatic cardiac arrest.

Patients were excluded if they had obvious signs of death, do-not-resuscitate orders, or arrest secondary to drowning. Overall, 44 of 113 patients (39%) had reports of gasping. Although similar proportions of patients with and without reports of gasping received bystander CPR, the group with gasping had a significantly higher rate of survival to hospital discharge (odds ratio for survival, 3.4). The authors conclude that abnormal breathing is common after cardiac arrest and that the public and medical dispatchers should be made aware of this finding.