Objective: The chances of surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest depend on early and high-quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Our aim is to verify whether the use of feedback devices during laypersons' CPR training improves chest compression quality.
Methods: Laypersons totalling 450 participating in Basic Life Support and Automated External Defibrillation (BLS/AED) courses were randomly divided into three groups: group No Feedback (NF) attended a course without any feedback, group Short Feedback (SF) a course with 1-minute training with real-time visual feedback, and group Long Feedback (LF) a course with 10-minute training with real-time visual feedback. At the end of each course, we recorded 1 minute of compression-only CPR. The primary end point was the difference in the percentage of compressions performed with correct depth.
Results: There was a significant improvement in the percentage of compressions with correct depth in the groups receiving feedback compared to the other (NF v. LF, p=0.022; NF v. SF, p=0.005). This improvement was also present in the percentage of compressions with a complete chest recoil (71.7% in NF, 86.6% in SF, and 88.8% in LF; p<0.001), compressions with the correct hand position (93.2% in NF, 98.2% in SF, and 99.3% in LF; p<0.001), and in the Total CPR Score (79.4% in NF, 90.2% in SF, and 92.5% in LF; p<0.001). There were no significant differences for all of the parameters between group SF and group LF.
Conclusions: Real-time visual feedback improves laypersons' CPR quality, and we suggest its use in every BLS/AED course for laypersons because it can help achieve the goals emphasized by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation recommendations.
Keywords: cardiac arrest; cardiopulmonary resuscitation; education; feedback devices; first responders; laypersons; training.