First quantitative analysis of cardiopulmonary resuscitation quality during in-hospital cardiac arrests of young children

AimThe objective of this study is to report, for the first time, quantitative data on CPR quality during the resuscitation of children under 8 years of age. We hypothesized that the CPR performed would often not achieve 2010 Pediatric Basic Life Support (BLS) Guidelines, but would improve with the addition of audiovisual feedback.MethodsProspective observational cohort evaluating CPR quality during chest compression (CC) events in children between 1 and 8 years of age. CPR recording defibrillators collected CPR data (rate (CC/min), depth (mm), CC fraction (CCF), leaning (%> 2.5 kg.)). Audiovisual feedback was according to 2010 Guidelines in a subset of patients. The primary outcome, “excellent CPR” was defined as a CC rate ≥100 and ≤120 CC/min, depth ≥50 mm, CCF >0.80, and <20% of CC with leaning.Results8 CC events resulted in 285 thirty-second epochs of CPR (15,960 CCs). Percentage of epochs achieving targets was 54% (153/285) for rate, 19% (54/285) for depth, 88% (250/285) for CCF, 79% (226/285) for leaning, and 8% (24/285) for excellent CPR. The median percentage of epochs per event achieving targets increased with audiovisual feedback for rate [88 (IQR: 79, 94) vs. 39 (IQR 18, 62) %; p = 0.043] and excellent CPR [28 (IQR: 7.2, 52) vs. 0 (IQR: 0, 1) %; p = 0.018].ConclusionsIn-hospital pediatric CPR often does not meet 2010 Pediatric BLS Guidelines, but compliance is better when audiovisual feedback is provided to rescuers.