South Korea Simplifies CPR Guidelines to Save More Lives in Cardiac Arrest Cases

South Korea has updated its emergency life-saving treatment guidelines for 2020. The revisions aim to simplify CPR procedures and encourage more people to perform them. Key changes include new techniques for infants, drowning victims, and defibrillator use on women.

The updated guidelines now recommend palm-heel thrusts for clearing foreign objects from an infant's airway. For babies under one year old, rescuers should use the two-thumb encircling method for CPR, no matter how many people are assisting. In cases of drowning-related cardiac arrest, conventional CPR with rescue breathing remains essential.

Another major change involves defibrillator use. Rescuers no longer need to remove an unresponsive woman's undergarments before attaching AED pads. Testing showed that leaving undergarments in place did not affect pad placement or shock effectiveness. Instead, rescuers should adjust clothing to ensure direct contact with bare skin, avoiding breast tissue.

The revisions were developed with input from the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine, the Korean Association of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, and the Korean Society of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. The full guidelines are available for download on the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) website.

The KDCA hopes these updates will increase public willingness to perform CPR and improve survival rates for cardiac arrest patients. By simplifying steps and addressing concerns about physical contact, the guidelines aim to make emergency response more accessible. The changes apply to both trained responders and bystanders in critical situations.