The world’s most famous life-saving rescue technique could be worse than death in many cases, according to a new report.
Administering CPR — or cardiopulmonary resuscitation — to a cardiac arrest sufferer might seem like a no-brainer. However, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation could paradoxically cause more harm than good, according to a disturbing new NPR investigation.
“The bad experiences far outnumber the good ones, unfortunately,” Holland Kaplan, a physician and bioethicist, told the outlet about the so-called dark side of CPR.
Not only is this revival method not as successful as portrayed on countless televised medical dramas — but it can leave many patients with lasting physical and cognitive impairments.
On classic TV shows such as “ER” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” CPR — compressing a patient’s chest to circulate blood during cardiac arrest — is oft-depicted as a fool-proof method of revival, on par with “True Love’s First Kiss” in “Snow White.”
In actuality, this so-called time-honored technique has long caused a host of complications, including “fractured or cracked ribs,” pulmonary hemorrhage, liver lacerations, and broken sternums and most, frighteningly, brain damage, per a 1961 Johns Hopkins Study.
The American Health organization estimates that CPR can cause neurological disabilities in up to 20 percent of cases.
CPR’s potential side effects are so bad that many patients — and even doctors — often refuse the treatment on themselves.
This is a far cry from CPR’s wider reputation in medical circles, in which it’s seen as a simple “two-handed” method that makes death “manipulable” by humans, according to sociologist and CPR expert Stefan Timmermans, NPR reported.
First described in medical literature circa 1878 following successful experiments on cats, CPR became the de facto method of restarting the heart in cardiac arrest patients, with official CPR classes becoming available to the public in the 1970s.
To this day, professionals ranging from daycare staff to prison personnel are often required to be CPR-certified.
Noted bioethicists wrote in 2017 that CPR was seen as so crucial that refusing to administer it might appear “equivalent to refusing to extend a rope to someone drowning,” according to the American Journal of Bioethics.
These popular perceptions are amplified by media and TV.
In another previous study, researchers found that the survival rate after CPR on TV was 70%, while people believe in real life that the number is north of 75%, NPR reported.
These results conflicted with a 2010 study, which found that overall rate of survival from out-of-hospital cardiac was 7.6%, and had been that way for three decades, NPR reported.
Meanwhile, the post-CPR survival rate for in-hospital treatment was only marginally better, clocking in at about 17%, while fewer than 2% of patients with preexisting conditions such as cancer or heart, lung, and liver disease were revived via CPR. In general, older patients fare worse as well.
“This is the truest of emergencies and you give people the simplest of procedures,” Timmermans told NPR of the “too good to be true” technique.
Not to mention that getting revived via CPR doesn’t preclude patients from experiencing life-threatening complications — some of which stem from the pressure required for its application.
“CPR may cause broken ribs or a fractured sternum (chest bone),” the American Academy of CPR and First AID writes. “This happens because the chest wall is compressed during compressions, and this can result in bone fractures.”
Another possible unintended consequence is a pulmonary embolism, which occurs when a clot breaks off and makes its way through the bloodstream before embedding in an “artery leading from your heart (pulmonary) or brain (cerebral).”
Most concerning, perhaps, is the neurological impact.
Permanent brain damage reportedly begins within four minutes of the heart stopping, so doctors often revive the blood-pumping muscle, only discover that the brain is dead.
Meanwhile, the constant stopping and starting of blood flow during CPR can also lead to brain swelling.
Approximately 30% of survivors of in-hospital cardiac arrest will experience severe neurological impairment while only 2% of survivors over 85 avoid traumatic brain damage,
This cardiovascular Catch-22 is the reason why many cardiac arrest patients are against receiving CPR altogether.
Up to 50% of survivors reportedly claim they wish they hadn’t been administered it despite living to tell the tale, according to a 2014 study.
In a divisive incident in 2013, a 87-year-old lady named Lorraine Bayless died after a nurse denied her CPR while she was suffering from cardiac arrest at a retirement home in Bakersfield.
While the case sparked national outrage, the family refused to press charges on the grounds that it was the woman’s “wish to die naturally and without any kind of life prolonging intervention.”
