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Withholding CPR in the Prehospital Setting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Samuel J. Stratton
Samuel J. Stratton
Affiliation:
EMS Medical Director, Los Angeles County, California, USA
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Extract

The expansion of hospices and recognition of living wills have made it necessary for emergency care providers to re-evaluate the appropriateness of universal application of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the field. The prehospital care community is coming to realize that CPR is beneficial only in certain specific situations. Some believe that when CPR is not likely to be beneficial, it should be withheld. Withholding CPR seems to be a simple matter of law and science, but a number of factors complicate the issue, especially in the prehospital setting: What are the definitive signs of irreversible, sudden death? When is the application of CPR futile? What are the responsibilities of the prehospital emergency care provider who announce someone dead? What is the lay public's perception of stopping or withholding CPR? Withholding CPR in this environment is a complicated social and emotional issue as well as a scientific and legal one.

Type
Controversy
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 45 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 1990

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