Increasing Use of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation During Out-of-Hospital Ventricular Fibrillation Arrest

The most recent resuscitation guidelines have sought to improve the interface between defibrillation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation; the survival impact of these changes is unknown, however. A year before issuance of the most recent guidelines, we implemented protocol changes that provided a single shock without rhythm reanalysis, stacked shocks, or postdefibrillation pulse check, and extended the period of cardiopulmonary resuscitation from 1 to 2 minutes. We hypothesized that survival would be better with the new protocol.