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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Study: Rural Americans, especially in the South, are not getting as much CPR training as in other areas

Americans in rural areas, especially the South, are not receiving much-needed training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, according to a study at Duke University that is reported in the Nov. 18 edition of JAMA Internal Medicine. "Each year, more than 350,000 Americans experience cardiac arrest outside of a hospital. On average, 7 to 9 percent of people survive, but these figures vary by geographic location," a Duke news release says. "Research has shown that when bystanders perform CPR, it doubles the likelihood of an individual surviving cardiac arrest outside of the hospital. However, rates of bystanders performing CPR vary widely, from 10 percent to 65 percent, depending on the community."

During the study, which took place from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011, "13.1 million people in the United States received CPR training, with a median county training rate of 2.39 percent," Duke Medicine reports. Counties were grouped into three categories: the lower third, with a median training rate of 0.51 percent, the middle third, at 2.39 percent, and the upper third, 6.81 percent. "Counties with the lowest rates of CPR training were more likely to be rural, have a higher proportion of African-American and Hispanic residents and a lower median household income," the study report says. "In addition, counties in the South were the most likely to have lower rates of CPR training compared with the Northeast." (Read more)

Researchers concluded, "These data, coupled with previous work demonstrating lower rates of bystander CPR among communities with higher proportions of minority populations and lower socioeconomic status, suggest that variation in bystander delivery of CPR may indeed be related to variation in rates of CPR training within communities. The work also highlights striking disparities in CPR education based on racial, socioeconomic, and geographic factors."

The report notes that "a considerable portion" of the training could have been re-certification of health-care providers; and that "The rates do not include CPR training provided by other organizations or CPR education through unconventional mechanisms that do not generate certification, such as video self-instructional approaches that have become more widespread in recent years." To read the full report click here. (Duke graphic)

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