As a way of keeping all of you informed with first aid matters, I would like to share with you comments made by the European Resuscitation Council on a study carried out in Japan.

This study concluded that compression-only CPR is preferable to mouth-to-mouth with compression resuscitation for treating casualties who suffer cardiac arrest outside hospitals. The ERC said that although this may be true for the first few minutes, it was not appropriate for longer times and EAV would be required if the arrest was caused by heart disease, drowning, trauma or with children.

The study was conducted in 2002-3 before the changes in protocol in 2005. The ERC says that any CPR is better than none at all but the current guidelines should be followed (30 compressions followed by 2 breaths). You can find the comments on the ERC web-site: www.erc.edu

Mike