Online CPR Certification Blog

According to a research, the rate at which old and elderly people survive after having CPR administered to them has insignificantly changed. This is evident even though there have been numerous initiatives and incentives adopted in order to improve the cardiopulmonary resuscitation procedure.

Reasons for survival rate stagnation in old people

In the study, only 18% of old people aged above 65 yrs receiving the treatment survived the ordeal and got released by the hospital. In between 1992 and 2000, number of people from the same age bracket facing similar circumstances that died increased.

Dr. William Ehlenbach confirmed that there were very dismal changes of survival even though efforts had been put in place to avoid such cases. Dr. William is from the University of Washington Seattle and is a senior fellow at the institution. He generalized this by saying that it could have been because people in this age bracket are sicker and more vulnerable as compared to younger age sets or groups.

The doctor expounded this topic by stating that CPR procedure is likely to succeed if the heart is the only major cause of disturbance or failure. CPR will therefore be unable to save victims in ICU suffering cardiac arrests from multiple reasons other than heart attacks.

A notable reason as to why there CPR isn’t a success in this age group is that victims have minimal survival chances altogether and CPR only condemns them to prolonged suffering or death.

Dr. Ehlenbach stressed that professionals in this field need to discuss on ways forward when it comes to end-of-life care. There is also need to include CPR’s role in such situation. The research brought forth the need to heighten the intensity of end-of-life care communication and education.

The investigators examined information on people aged 65yrs and above who were admitted in between 1992 and 2005. Findings indicated that 433,985 received CPR in hospital and only 18.3% of this number survived and got released from the hospital.

Racial composition factors in such cases

The research also showed that a higher number of non-whites and black received CPR treatment though blacks had a 24% lower survival rate as compared to white patients. Dr. Ehlenbach was bamboozled by the reports thus evaluating further to confirm the claims. The doctor questioned it and said that the research only ascertained that the findings were due to a ‘hospital effect.’

Associate professor of geriatrics and palliative, Dr. Daniel Brauner, from the university of Chicago Medical Center stated that differences in health care can contribute to the results of the findings. He added that the very same findings can be a sign to indicate that there is need to deploy more educational facilities in such institutions.

Dr. Brauner said that blacks often request for CPR before other methods. This could be attributed to the fact that a lot of African Americans were very confident on the procedure and believed on its effectiveness when it came to increasing survival chances.

The research highlighted that a huge number of survivors remained in hospitals to receive care even after the CPR procedure.

To summarize, the doctor said that there were cases where it was wise to overlook CPR especially if the old patient was at the latter stages of an illness.