Objectives & Background The primary purpose of the study was to compare the metrics on the effectiveness of chest compressions obtained through an advanced CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) manikin and a real-time CPR feedback device during simulated CPR.

Methods This was a prospective, randomized controlled study. The study group consisted of 21 medical school and 62 paramedic students who were already trained in BLS skills. A five-question pretest on high-quality CPR was administered to all participants and they all performed a two-minute chest compression on an advanced CPR manikin. No statistically significant relationship was found in terms of pretest results, basal compression rates and depths between the two groups (p>0.05). The population was then randomly divided into two groups. The control group, consisting of 43 students, performed two-minute CPR on an advanced CPR manikin, followed by a two-minute CPR session with a simple metronome feedback. The study group performed two-minute CPR on an advanced CPR manikin, followed by a two-minute CPR using a TrueCPR real-time feedback device. We analyzed the compression rate and depth of both techniques.

Results The compression rate during CPR with a simple metronome feedback was significantly higher compared to that obtained during standard CPR (108±6.2 vs 119.0±18.2/min;p<0.05). However there was no significant difference in compression depth between the techniques (p>0.05). Use of the TrueCPR feedback device resulted in significant improvement in both the compression rate (106.2±4.8 vs 121.6±13.1/min;p<0.05) and the compression depth (56.5±5.8 mm vs 53.6±7.0 mm; p<0.05) compared to standard CPR without feedback. When CPR performance obtained by using both feedback methods was compared, there was no statistical difference between compression rates (p>0.05), whereas the TrueCPR device yielded significantly deeper compression depth compared to the simple metronome (56.5±5.8 vs 53.3±6.5 mm; p<0.05).

Conclusion Feedback with a device during CPR is an effective method to achieve adequate compression rate and depth. The real-time feedback device can be particularly effective and offer advantages during the actual CPR procedure based on the more effective CPR metric achieved by its use. However, further studies to show the clinical effectiveness of the real-time CPR feedback devices are needed.