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Current cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) guidelines emphasize continuous compressions with minimal interruptions. The focus has been on minimizing perishock pauses, as these were the types of pauses most easily measured during ongoing resuscitations. However, impedance recording capabilities of newer defibrillators allow measurement of all interruptions. To determine whether pauses for any reason are associated with reduced survival, researchers reviewed all cases of ventricular fibrillation out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Amsterdam in 2009 for which all continuous impedance recordings were available (including from public access defibrillators).
A total of 319 patients were included, with an overall survival to hospital discharge of 38…