(Vienna, 16 August 2023) To ensure that resuscitation measures after cardiac arrest can save as many lives as possible outside Europe and other high-resource regions, international recommendations for resuscitation are to be revised. The basis for this is an expert statement, which was recently published in "The Lancet Global Health" under the leadership of MedUni Vienna.
Survival rates following cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) are increasing internationally due to improved care and standardized therapies. Corresponding guidelines (such as those of the ERC, European Resuscitation Council) are based on the regularly updated Consensus on Science with Treatment Recommendations (CoSTR) of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR). However, these recommendations were developed from the perspective of a high-resource setting and are designed to be applied there. Resource situations vary internationally, however, and even in high-resource countries there may be areas where resuscitation resources are limited.
ILCOR has now acknowledged that, to date, the CPR recommendations do not, in fact, take into account large parts of the world. A group of experts from various low- and high-resource countries has now formulated the conditions and barriers to resuscitation in low-resource settings, as well as initial action points. The initiative for the statement, now published in The Lancet Global Health, came from Sebastian Schnaubelt, Department of Emergency Medicine at MedUni Vienna. "Global recommendations on any medical topic need to take into account the wide variety of regional, national and international differences in terms of culture, resources and priorities. On the other hand, there are many things that unite us - for example, the common goal of saving lives," says Schnaubelt, who heads the respective international ILCOR working group. Supporting this important first step toward increased survival after CPR, even in low-resource settings, are the African Federation for Emergency Medicine (AFEM), the European Society for Emergency Medicine (EUSEM), the International Federation for Emergency Medicine (IFEM), and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
Publication: The Lancet Global Health
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation in low-resource settings. A statement by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR), supported by the African Federation for Emergency Medicine (AFEM), the European Society for Emergency Medicine (EUSEM), the International Federation for Emergency Medicine (IFEM), and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC);
Sebastian Schnaubelt, Rakesh Garg, Huba Atiq, Noor Baig, Marta Bernardino, Blair Bigham, Samantha Dickson, Heike Geduld, Zehra’ Al-Hilali, Sanjaya Karki, Sa’ad Lahri, Ian Maconochie, Fernando Montealegre, Mahmoud Tageldin Mustafa, Susan Niermeyer, Justine Athieno Odakha, Jeffrey Perlman, Koenraad Monsieurs, Robert Greif
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(23)00302-9/fulltext