> Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a ‘tension pneumothorax’), walked out of the hospital.

This point has been made by many medically trained people over decades. It's a very energetic intensive process, it cracks ribs. If it's not done promptly the brain has been starved of oxygen.

While I understand people not wanting to drag politics into everything I invite you to think about this and the situation of the senior senator for Kentucky.

> It's a very energetic intensive process, it cracks ribs.

I feel like lately this is becoming more common knowledge - but still something most people don't realize.

Part of it is probably the fact that it's impossible to depict "real" CPR in popular culture (movies, TV shows, etc) unless the production goes to extreme lengths to use a fake dummy. Even on The Pitt (which seems to make a point of being hyper realistic) I've seen them do "fake" CPR with shallow compressions.

Totally misleading. Early CPR (+AED if available) absolutely saves lives. Article is from 2011 by a family med doctor.

Overly aggressive resuscitation attempts are definitely a problem but context matters

I have a friend who had a spontaneous pneumothorax. He even wrote a song about it after he recovered.

I myself punctured and collapsed both lungs. My thinking is: if there's a reasonable chance I'll survive, go for it. If there's not, stop trying to prolong the inevitable. That said, when I had the accident they told my wife to get there as fast as she could because I was likely not going to make it, and that was thirty years ago. So: if they're confident I'm going to die, don't try to prolong it :-)

If CPR is done right ~10% will walk out of the hospital. But that's a big if! Must be near a trained bystander. AED is much better on shockable rhythms, ~70%. Unfortunately most out-of-hospital cardiac events occur in homes which rarely have access to a device.

In 2021, a drone-delivered AED was used to successfully shock a 71-year-old man back into a stable rhythm in Sweden. The drone delivered the AED in just over three minutes from a 911 call.

Studying years of emergency drone data back up the anecdotes. The AED gets there 10-15 min ahead of medics and boosts survival 70%.

Do you know what is happening with McConnell? Because the news is everywhere from he's fine to he's dead.

Edit: this is not meant to be snarky. This is a real question.

MY ex-wife who was a CNA had made it a point to me that she had a DNR. How or where, she never told me. Probably for the best.