It only takes 60 seconds to learn how to save a life, says a new study, which found that watching a one-minute video demonstrating an abbreviated version of CPR is enough to get people to try it in emergency situations.
Researchers at the University of Arizona Emergency Medicine Research Centre say the hands-only form of cardio pulmonary resuscitation can keep blood flowing in a patient whose heart has suddenly stopped.
For their study of 336 adults who had not had recent CPR training, the researchers randomly placed the participants into groups:
- No training (control group of 51 participants)
- Ultra brief video (UBV): watched a 60-second video (95 participants)
- Brief video (BV): watched a five-minute video (99 participants)
The results showed that those who viewed even the brief 60-second video were "more likely to attempt CPR, and perform better quality CPR in an emergency than participants who did not view the short videos," the researchers wrote.
The study is published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
When they measured the quality and speed of the chest compressions following the brief video "training," the researchers were surprised at how good even the brief training was.
"The rate of the chest compressions were very, very high-quality, nearly perfect in all the experimental groups" says lead study author Dr. Bentley Bobrow of the Arizona Department of Health Services.
When some of the subjects were tested two months after viewing the 60-second video, they were still able to perform high-quality hands-only CPR, "which is amazing," Bobrow said.
Each year, nearly 300,000 people suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Canada and the U.S. Survival rates from these events tend to be woefully low, says Bobrow.
CPR performed by a bystander can double -- even triple -- survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. But very few people attempt resuscitation, with CPR started only 25 to 30 per cent of the time, according to Bobrow.
Studies are showing that chest compression-only CPR, also known as hands-only CPR, is as effective as standard CPR with mouth-to-mouth ventilation. Because of its simplicity, hands-only CPR may be quicker and easier for lay rescuers to learn and remember.
Bobrow says that the success of the short video is exciting for health-care professionals, for whom it opens up new avenues for training the public.
"In the end we want people to act," Bobrow says. "People panic and don't do anything and that is what is deadly, inaction."