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According to the 2010 American Heart Association Advanced Cardiac Life Support Guidelines, “The precordial thump may be considered for patients with witnessed, monitored, unstable VT (including pulseless VT) if a defibrillator is not immediately ready for use, but it should not delay CPR and shock delivery.” To determine the effect of precordial thump, researchers in Australia retrospectively analyzed data for 434 consecutive adult (age >15 years) patients with paramedic-witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and initial rhythms of ventricular fibrillation/ventricular tachycardia over an 8-year period.
Overall, 103 patients (24%) received an initial precordial thump (thump-first group) and 325 (75%) were immediately defibrillated (shock-fi…