Basic cardiac life support education teaches health care providers and lay people perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), rescue breathing and the Heimlich maneuver to help choking victims. It also teaches the use of an automated external defibrillator (AED).
History
CPR in its modern incarnation was developed in 1960 but was taught only to physicians. It wasn't until the early 1970s that training lay people to perform CPR became a popular idea.
Significance
Good CPR statistics are hard to come by, since they are not monitored by any one agency. The American Heart Association, however, estimates that up to 50 percent of people with ventricular fibrillation, a fatal arrhythmia that causes the heart to flutter instead of beat normally, will survive if given CPR and defibrillation within the first few minutes of collapse.
