Rock you perform CPR until you have an AED, then you use it. If the heart is beating an AED will NOT SHOCK THE PERSON. The AED is a very clever little machine.
http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=36578&tid=001
just called my local red cross. Performing chest compressions on a person who's heart is beating is not ideal... in fact compressions are NEVER ideal... but neither is death, so you do them anyways. Please read below:
Wow all this from a woman who did not even know what ventilation was a few posts ago! And now she is an expert.
OK, first off, yes she is right, quoted pretty much word for word Canadian Red Crosses existing official position. Both forms of CPR are equally good
They upgrade their protocols every 5 years.
After the change to "either is ok" in 2010 we have enough data to evaluate that decision based on facts. Pretty much the same results have been found from everywhere from Japan to the UK.
For example: Taku Iwami (Kyoto University Health Service, Japan published results that concluded: "The present study suggests that the combination of early defibrillation with public-access AEDs and [chest-compression-only] CPR by bystanders is the best way to save lives after sudden cardiac arrests,"
By the way from the same study: "After accounting for confounders, patients who received chest-compression-only CPR were 33% more likely to achieve these outcomes than those given traditional CPR". and "Shorter time between arrest and first shock also improved patients chances for a good outcome, by 7% for each minute reduction."
Interesting that this contradicted the Nara Medical University School of Medicine, Department of Public Health, Health Management and Policy paper published a year earlier.
Nara Medical University School of Medicine, Department of Public Health, Health Management and Policy
Note that these results were based on CPR compression AND AED, But even though the survival rate is much lower without the AED
http://heart.arizona.edu/cpr-advances found that a
"significantly greater percentage of cardiac arrest victims survived in the
chest-compression-only CPR group (13.3 percent) compared to those in the
conventional CPR group (7.8 percent)."
So what? You can follow the advice of Red Cross based on 2008 atudies and expect 'similar results' either way, or you can decide to use Compression CPR and expect a 13% survival rate.
FYI their is another side to all this. It assumes a "lay person" is doing the CPR, it assumes directions re being provided typically by EMT, and it applies "for patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest ". That is not the only reason people collapse.
Ok off my soap box
Of the point of all this.... facts are facts

Get an AED. think about it. 40% chance of surviving a cardiac arrest vs .... well being dead.
Maybe you guys should insist all SPs be certified in Compression CPR ?