The year 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)
It was 1960. John F. Kennedy was running for President, Xerox introduced the first paper copy machine. And across the country coronary artery disease had reached epidemic levels. So it was fortuitous, and a bit ironic, that the year coronary artery disease peaked also marked the birth of modern CPR. A group of resuscitation pioneers combined mouth-to-mouth breathing with chest compressions to create Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, the lifesaving action we now call “CPR.”. Unless cardiac arrest happened in the emergency room, it was virtually 100 percent fatal. Since the advent of CPR, deaths from heart attack have fallen by two thirds. Some of the decrease in deaths from cardiac arrest is attributable to more wide spread dissemination of CPR, first to physicians and nurses, later to Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and more recently into the communities, Blackburn said.
Before the 1960s, reviving a stopped heart was solely the domain of surgeons, who could massage the heart through an open chest if they happened to be operating when the problem occurred. The first save was in Miami, when Paramedics performed CPR and defibrillated a 60 year old victim. In 1979 dispatchers provided CPR instructions to 911 callers under protocols, and in 1984 the first Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) were distributed in Washington.
Studies have shown the chances of surviving cardiac arrest are roughly doubled for those who receive CPR prior to EMS arrival. If CPR is started right, it extends the window in which the defibrillator can be effective from 4-6 minutes to 10-12 minutes. CPR has to begin in the first minutes of cardiac arrest and the defibrillator has to arrive at the scene quickly as possible. If that message is spread to our society, and make defibrillators as common as smoke detectors, you will see resuscitation rates from cardiac arrest improve 60-70 percent. Join me throughout this anniversary year as we celebrate CPR and the people whose lives it has saved over the last 50 years!
04-09-11
13:15 hrs