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Comment by elric | Hacker News Reader

When I was attending a first aid & CPR class, one of the first things the instructor explained was that the chance of successful CPR is very, very low, but not attempting CPR obviously reduces the odds even more. Not to discourage anyone, but rather to prevent us from beating ourselves up over it if things didn't go well.

If you don't know CPR, you might want to consider learning.

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Our community had one of those horrible situations you hope never happens, kid drowning in the pool during end of year celebration. The woman that pulled him out and successfully revived him with CPR was a doctor, but credited the save to her childhood lifeguard CPR training.

Please learn CPR if you can.

I echo your suggestion. Anyone can learn CPR online for free (no in-person session though) through the Disque Foundation (I'm not affiliated): https://disquefoundation.org/cpr-first-aid-aed-certification...

I think by "successful" the instructor meant actually restarting the heart and reviving the patient, which is very unlikely. Keeping blood moving und preventing/delaying neurological damage is the thing the patient will benefit from.

I was shocked to learn how traumatic properly done CPR is, think broken ribs, etc… no wonder so many older doctors have DNRs.

I think a big part of it is that long-term survival rates aren't very high. If you need CPR because of an underlying illness, you're probably actively dying. If you're an older doctor, you probably know it.

CPR has a much better success rate when something like an electric shock stops an otherwise-healthy person's heart.

It's usually a good thing that the heart sits inside a boney cage. Not so much when you're trying to coax it into action.

Yes when I was CPR'd I got broken ribs. It was the defib that brought me round though.

The broken ribs were much more painful than the subsequent ICD implant. Although subsequently meeting the people who broke my ribs was actually a very happy and positive experience.

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