• Florence Dumas, Thomas D Rea, Carol Fahrenbruch, Marten Rosenqvist, Jonas Faxén, Leif Svensson, Mickey S Eisenberg, and Katarina Bohm.
• Emergency Medical Services Division of Public Health for Seattle and King County, Seattle, WA, USA. florence.dumas@cch.aphp.fr
• Circulation. 2013 Jan 29;127(4):435-41.

BackgroundLittle is known about the long-term survival effects of type-specific bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the community. We hypothesized that dispatcher instruction consisting of chest compression alone would be associated with better overall long-term prognosis in comparison with chest compression plus rescue breathing.Methods And ResultsThe investigation was a retrospective cohort study that combined 2 randomized trials comparing the short-term survival effects of dispatcher CPR instruction consisting either of chest compression alone or chest compression plus rescue breathing. Long-term vital status was ascertained by using the respective National and State death records through July 31, 2011. We performed Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression to evaluate survival according to the type of CPR instruction. Of the 2496 subjects included in the current investigation, 1243 (50%) were randomly assigned to chest compression alone and 1253 (50%) were randomly assigned to chest compression plus rescue breathing. Baseline characteristics were similar between the 2 CPR groups. During the 1153.2 person-years of follow-up, there were 2260 deaths and 236 long-term survivors. Randomization to chest compression alone in comparison with chest compression plus rescue breathing was associated with a lower risk of death after adjustment for potential confounders (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.91; 95% confidence interval, 0.83-0.99; P=0.02).ConclusionsThe findings provide strong support for long-term mortality benefit of dispatcher CPR instruction strategy consisting of chest compression alone rather than chest compression plus rescue breathing among adult patients with cardiac arrest requiring dispatcher assistance.

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