Study Explores If YouTube can Save Your Life

A new study reveals that only a handful of CPR and basic life support (BLS) videos available on YouTube provide proper instructions.

A new study reveals that only a handful of CPR and basic life support (BLS) videos available on YouTube provide proper instructions that conform to recent health guidelines.

The study is published in Emergency Medicine Australasia, the journal for the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM).

Heart Attack - Overview
Heart attack is the death of the heart muscle due to loss of blood supply. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Other names for heart attack include acute myocardial infarction, coronary thrombosis, and coronary occlusion.

Early recognition and treatment of sudden cardiac arrest are known to improve survival forvictims.

A team of Turkish emergency medicine specialists put together the study, which reviewed educational videos from the last three years accessed via YouTube when the search terms "CPR", "cardiopulmonary resuscitation", "BLS" and "basic life support" were entered.

Of the many thousands of videos produced by these search results, most were excluded for a variety of reasons, including being irrelevant, being recorded in languages other than English and being accompanied by advertisements.

CPR - Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation
CPR or CARDIOPULMONARY RESUSCITATION can restore function of the heart and lungs due to any condition that causes the heart to come to a stop. This usually happens after a massive heart-attack.

A total of 209 videos were eventually analysed.

Only 11.5% of the analysed videos were found to be completely compatible with 2010 CPR guidelines with regard to sequence of interviews.

Poorer Communities in US Have Lower CPR Training Rates
Researchers have found that rural areas and communities in South, Midwest and West have lower rates of cardiopulmonary resuscitation training.

"Although well-designed videos can create awareness and be useful as tools in training, they can never replace hands-on instruction from a properly qualified health practitioner," said Associate Professor Paul Middleton, Fellow of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) and Chair of the Australian Resuscitation Council NSW.

"People wanting to learn CPR and BLS skills should seek out a properly accredited training course."

Associate Professor Paul Middleton indicated that a few videos were available via YouTube which provided generally competent educational advice on how to perform CPR and basic life support, but finding them is not easy and very few could genuinely be regarded as perfect in teaching basic life support and CPR.

Source-Eurekalert