33,000 Annual Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrests... "CPR Doubles Survival Rate"

KDCA Distributes 12 Types of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Training Videos

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. [Image source=Pixabay]

On the 12th, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency announced that it has produced 12 types of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training videos to make it easy for anyone to learn and utilize.

CPR is an emergency procedure that directly supplies oxygenated blood to the brain by replacing the stopped heart when heart function rapidly declines or stops. It is the first step in determining the survival of patients with sudden cardiac arrest, so it is important to expand educational opportunities for the public to learn CPR.

According to the '2021 Sudden Cardiac Arrest Survey,' among 33,235 patients who experienced sudden cardiac arrest outside of hospitals, 29,076 cases were witnessed by laypersons rather than rescuers or medical personnel, and CPR was performed in 8,381 cases (28.8%) among them.

In particular, the survival rate was 11.6% when CPR was performed by laypersons, whereas only 5.3% survived when it was not performed, showing that the survival rate was more than twice as high when CPR was administered.

Ji Young-mi, director of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, said, "Since rapid initial response is crucial when sudden cardiac arrest is witnessed, we hope that the CPR training video materials will contribute to saving patients," and added, "We will continue to expand the development of materials that make it easy to learn and master CPR based on ongoing investigations into sudden cardiac arrest."