Background: Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation can improve the survival rate of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Teaching cardiopulmonary resuscitation in schools by teachers is one of the ways to increase the number of bystanders who can perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Nevertheless, there have been no studies on the readiness of teachers in Hong Kong to teach cardiopulmonary resuscitation in their schools. Objective: To assess whether secondary school teachers are prepared to teach their students cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Methods: This was a questionnaire survey. Teachers from 22 local secondary schools were recruited. The questionnaires were designed with questions covering their knowledge about cardiopulmonary resuscitation and attitudes towards teaching their students cardiopulmonary resuscitation. A knowledge score and attitude score were calculated. Result: 557 teachers completed the questionnaires. Most had never witnessed a cardiac arrest and over half of them had never been trained cardiopulmonary resuscitation or use of an automated defibrillator. About 25% of them answered all questions on knowledge wrong. Only 25% supported teaching cardiopulmonayr resuscitation in schools and 32% were willing to teach it. Legal liability was a major concern. Conclusion: Local teachers' readiness for teaching students cardiopulmonary resuscitation in secondary schools is likely poor. More efforts are required to raise their knowledge level on cardiopulmonary resuscitation and instill a positive attitude towards cardiopulmonary resuscitation education in schools.

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Background: The healthcare need of the elderly in Hong Kong is a major issue. Foreign domestic helpers, especially those from the Philippines, play a significant role in response to the healthcare need of a home-dwelling elder as they are often the sole caregiver of the elders. Objectives: This study primarily aimed at exploring the Filipino domestic helpers' knowledge of and attitude to managing a medical emergency of a home-dwelling elder. Methods: This was a questionnaire survey of the Filipino domestic helpers working in Hong Kong and was conducted from 1 July 2015 to 29 February 2016. The survey collected their demographic data, evaluated their first aid knowledge by a test of multiple-choice questions and assessed their attitudes to providing first aid to the elders they cared in terms of confidence and perceived responsibility. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the findings. Results: In all, 398 Filipino domestic helpers were surveyed. Most had completed university education. About one third had been trained in first aid. The average mark attained by the respondents on first aid knowledge assessment was 4.5 (full mark = 16). Their knowledge was especially poor in heat exhaustion, choking, external bleeding, epistaxis and scald injury. Their median confidence score was 10 (full score = 15) and median perceived responsibility score was 13 (full score = 20). Conclusion: The first aid knowledge among the Filipino domestic helpers surveyed in this study was poor. They were not confident enough in providing first aid to an elder and their perceived responsibility was also low.

The objective of this review was to summarize published evidence of the effectiveness of therapeutic hypothermia in patients with drowning-associated asphyxial out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and to explore any preliminary favorable factors in the management of therapeutic hypothermia to improve survival and neurological outcome. Drowning may result in asphyxial OHCA or hypothermic OHCA, but the former does not provide any potential neuroprotective effect as the latter may do. Electronic literature searches of Ovid Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Scopus were performed for all years from inception to July 2016. Primary studies in the form of case reports, letters to the editor, and others with higher quality are included, but guidelines, reviews, editorials, textbook chapters, conference abstracts, and nonhuman studies are excluded. Non-English articles are excluded. Relevant studies are then deemed eligible if the drowning OHCA patient's initial temperature was above 28°C, which implies asphyxial cardiac arrest, and intentional therapeutic hypothermia was instituted. Because of the narrow scope of interest and strict definition of the condition, limited studies addressed it, and no randomized controlled trials (RCT) could be selected. Thirteen studies covering 35 patients are included. No quantitative synthesis, assessment of study quality, or assessment of bias was performed. It is conjectured that extended therapeutic hypothermia of 48-72 hours might help prevent reperfusion injury during the intermediate phase of postcardiac arrest care to benefit patients of drowning-associated asphyxial OHCA, but this finding only serves as preliminary observation for future research. No conclusive recommendation could be made regarding the duration of and the time of onset of therapeutic hypothermia. Future research should put effort on RCT, particularly the effect of extended duration of 48-72 hours. Important parameters should be reported in detail. Asphyxial and hypothermic OHCA should be differentiated.