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Cardiac arrest
Rescue breaths help in non-cardiac arrest
Rescue-breathing versus chest compression-only bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation in non-cardiac out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a nationwide retrospective cohort study
Resuscitation · 2026-11 · Added 26 September 2026
A nationwide Japanese registry cohort of 154,137 non-cardiac OHCA patients found bystander rescue-breathing CPR was associated with slightly lower 30-day mortality and unfavourable neurological outcome than compression-only CPR, with the clearest benefit in children and drowning arrests.
- Study type
- Registry
- Design
- Retrospective nationwide registry cohort
- Participants
- 154,137 patients with non-cardiac OHCA (20,124 rescue-breathing CPR, 134,013 compression-only)
- Main finding
- Rescue-breathing CPR had lower 30-day mortality (adjusted RR 0.98, 95% CI 0.98–0.99) and unfavourable neurological outcome (adjusted RR 0.99), strongest in paediatric and drowning arrests
- Caveat
- Retrospective registry data with residual confounding by bystander type and case mix; absolute differences are very small
- Bottom line
- Hypothesis-generating
Why it matters in Australia (High relevance). This is a bystander-CPR and public-education question that Australian dispatcher instruction and CPR training programs act on directly, and the drowning subgroup is highly relevant locally.
Learning goal
Weigh the role of rescue breaths over compression-only CPR in non-cardiac arrest, especially drowning and paediatric cases.
More
- Topic: Cardiac arrest
- Daily scan: 26 September 2026
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