Effectiveness of chest compressions performed by lay students before and after the course “CPR Anytime: Hands-only”

Porpose of the study: The hands-only CPR has been extensively studied and discussed in recent years, particularly when performed by lay students. Many of these studies have demonstrated its greater efficacy compared to conventional CPR. We hypothesized that have been completed the course “CPR Anytime: Hands-only”, lay people would have greater effectiveness in doing chest compressions than before. Material and methods: We studied 73 college students who had no knowledge of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The examination was held in two parts, before and after attending to the course. The first part was asked for the students to accomplish two minutes of chest compressions using the Resusci Anne manikin with the PC skill reporting system. In continuation the topic “hands-only CPR” was taught, contained in the DVD “Family and Friends CPR Anytime.” After 30 min the course had been finalized, the students were evaluated again by making the same process of doing two minutes of chest compressions using the same dummy. Results: Participants had a mean age of 20.2 ± 2.9 years, 26% were male. In the pre-course: the average frequency (compressions/min), the percentage of correct position of the hands and adequate depth was 88.8 compressions/min, 50.5% and 20.4%, respectively. After the course: the average frequency (98.6 compressions/min) and the percentage of correct position of the hands (86.6%) showed significant improvement with p = 0.0055 and p < 0.0001, respectively, while the percentage of chest compressions with adequate depth (20.4% vs. 27.2%, p = 0.0508) did not. Conclusion: As hypothesized we observed that lay students performed more effective chest compressions after attending the “CPR Anytime: hands-only” course. Therefore we recommend the spreading of the training in order to reduce the death rate from cardiac arrest.