Modern Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation—not so New after All

Abstract

Death may usurp on nature many hours, And yet the fire of life kindle again The o'pressed spirits. I heard of an Egyptian That had nine hours lien dead, Who was by good appliances recover'd.'-Shakespeare, Pericles, Act 3, Scene 2 DISTINCTION BETWEEN APPARENT AND ABSOLUTE DEATH James Curry (d. 1819) (Figure 1), a Northampton physician who was later elected to the staff of Guy's Hospital,

Could post-mortem computed tomography angiography inform cardiopulmonary resuscitation research?

“…Closed (external) chest compressions (CCC) as a form of CPR have been described in the literature for over 100 hundred years 3 , but were introduced into modern medical practice by the work of Kouwenhoven et al 4 in 1960. The principle was that CCC caused forward blood flow, but this was almost immediately questioned.…”

Advances in the Diagnosis of Shock, Its Assessment and Resuscitation during the Great War

“…In the early 1900's George Crile, an American surgeon, had described the use of external cardiac compression both in dogs and humans to maintain circulation 17 . Artificial ventilation with bellows had been described in the 18 th century and in 1907 the first artificial ventilator, the Pulmotor, was patented by Heinrich Draeger 18 .…”

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in Small Animal Medicine: An Update

“…Since 1960, little improvement has been made in the success rate of CPCR in humans. 2,3 Approximately 330,000 people in the United States die every year from sudden cardiac arrest, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. 4 The survival rate for out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest in people, defined by survival to discharge from the hospital, is o6.4% for the United States and Canada.…”