A study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that bystander-performed CPR and AED operation improves long-term outcomes for patients who experience cardiac arrest.
Dr Michael Kurz is an associate professor at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, and a spokesperson for the American Heart Association (AHA).
He said it’s important to have research like this that confirms the long-range impact of bystanders’ response to cardiac arrest.
“We don’t just want people to survive,” Kurz said. “We want them to be able to go home to their families and get back to their lives.”
In the United States, more than 350,000 people suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital each year, according to the AHA.
In 2016, the group says, only 12 percent of those who suffered cardiac arrest survived—though that actually marks progress over previous rates.
Survival is dismal because, without emergency treatment, cardiac arrest is fatal within minutes.
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