Television shows outdated CPR techniques

A study warns that movies or series that can be seen on television usually show to the general public outdated cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) techniqueswhich could fuel misconceptions that would delay vital bystander interventions in the crucial moments after an actual cardiac arrest.

This is according to researchers from the School of Public Health and the School of Medicine of the University of Pittsburgh (United States) in the first analysis of television representations of CPR performed by witnesses, published in the journal in Circulation: Population Health and Outcomes.

In 2008, the American Heart Association (AHA) approved hands-only CPRa simpler and faster intervention that proved to be equally effective in bringing oxygen to vital organscompared to the approach used by healthcare providers that also incorporates rescue breaths, popularly known as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

“In my volunteer work training youth in Pittsburgh in CPR, there is a lot of confusion. We ask the students, ‘What’s the first thing you do?’ and they answer: ‘Take the pulse.’ “But we don’t do it anymore in eyewitness CPR,” explains Beth L. Hoffman, associate professor of behavioral and community health sciences at Pitt Public Health. And in our pre-course surveys, many students say having seen CPR on social media and television. “Those two observations inspired the study.”

Hands-only CPR consists of only two steps: Call the emergency room and start chest compressions. However, when analyzing 169 episodes of American television shows showing hands-only CPR since 2008, researchers found that less than 30% of episodes showed the steps correctly. Almost half of the episodes featured outdated practices, such as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (48%) and pulse taking (43%).

The team’s analysis found more discrepancies between television and real life, both in who receives bystander CPR and where they receive it. On screen, 44% of recipients had between 21 and 40 yearswhile in reality, The average age of those receiving CPR is 62 years. In the programs studied, 80% of CPR recipients were in public and 20% were at home although in reality, 80% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur at home.

“This could distort public perception,” warns recent Pitt graduate Ore Fawole, who led the coding and analysis of the study as lead author. “If viewers believe that cardiac arrests only occur in public or in young people, they may not find CPR training relevant to their own lives. But most cardiac arrests happen at home, and the person you save is probably a loved one.”

The study also showed disparities in who receives CPR, and in this case, fiction and reality coincided. The majority of cardiac arrest victims who received hands-only CPR were white men. Today, women, black people, and Latino people are less likely than white men to receive life-saving intervention from a bystander.

“We don’t know if this reflects reality or shapes it, but it would be a good question to explore in future studies,” says Hoffman, who notes that collaboration between public health experts and content creators could help ensure that CPR depictions empower viewers to act, and act correctly, when every second counts.