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(Circulation. 2005;112:III-126 – III-127.)
© 2005 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial

International Collaboration in Resuscitation Medicine

Richard O. Cummins, MD, MPH, MSc; Douglas Chamberlain, MD; William H. Montgomery, MD; Walter G.J. Kloeck, MD, BCh; Vinay M. Nadkarni, MD

From the 2005 International Consensus Conference on Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care Science With Treatment Recommendations, hosted by the American Heart Association in Dallas, Texas, January 23–30, 2005.

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

"Researchers from many countries, publishing in multiple languages, are building the scientific foundation for resuscitation practice. Universal guidelines will follow if we can find a way to gather all this information in one location and decide what it all means."

— —Richard O. Cummins and Douglas Chamberlain, founding cochairs of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation

For more than a decade an international collaboration of clinicians and researchers has tried to identify, evaluate, and interpret the most valid resuscitation science. This supplement to Circulation (simultaneously published in Resuscitation) presents these collaborators’ latest attempts to reach consensus on what the science means and what resuscitation practices should follow. We have not reached our goal of universal resuscitation guidelines, but we have made a worthy attempt. Building on the International Guidelines 2000 Conference on CPR and ECC,¹ in January 2005 a total of 380 experts reviewed 276 resuscitation topics, digested countless peer-reviewed publications, and participated in 6 days of almost continuous discussion and debate. Particular attention was paid to disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and identification of topics that lacked good evidence to support current practice.

We can trace the pedigree of these efforts over half a century. The original reports of rescue breathing² and closed-chest compressions³ and the effective combination of the two⁴ created an immediate demand for CPR training and performance guidelines. In 1966 the Institute of Medicine convened the first conference to specifically review the evidence and recommend standard CPR and ECC techniques.⁵ The American Heart . . . [Full Text of this Article]