Pediatric cardiac arrests are, fortunately, rare occurences which deeply affect prehospital providers. Most pediatric cardiac arrests are consecutive to hypoxic mechanisms and the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) guidelines advocate the provision of 5 initial rescue breaths prior to initiating chest compressions. Conversely, the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends following the adult resuscitation sequence. We took advantage of the first prehospital research day of the French part of Switzerland to carry out a crossover, randomized trial to evaluate the impact of ERC and AHA guidelines on alveolar ventilation in a simulated model of pediatric cardiac arrest.

Click here to read this study, codenamed CPR-4 (Impact of Two Resuscitation Sequences on Alveolar Ventilation during the First Minute of Simulated Pediatric Cardiac Arrest: Randomized Cross-Over Trial)

Reference: Suppan, L.; Jampen, L.; Siebert, J.N.; Zünd, S.; Stuby, L.; Ozainne, F. Impact of Two Resuscitation Sequences on Alveolar Ventilation during the First Minute of Simulated Pediatric Cardiac Arrest: Randomized Cross-Over Trial. Healthcare 2022, 10, 2451. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10122451

To enhance participant recruitment, a motivational video was broadcasted prior to this research day. You can access this video by clicking here.