In all the cases, not a single patient had been given CPR prior to our arrival.
There's your killer factor right there... The article did talk about people receiving CPR right away from a bystander. And that was the case of my colleague's mother too - they were sitting at the dinner table together when his mom's heart went into cardiac arrest, and one of them had been trained to do CPR.
It sounds like CPR is absolutely worthwhile, based on the statistics you quoted - there's a 10x or more improvement in success rate from immediate CPR. However, that CPR needs to be immediate. The obvious conclusion is that more people should be trained in CPR techniques.
There's your killer factor right there... The article did talk about people receiving CPR right away from a bystander. And that was the case of my colleague's mother too - they were sitting at the dinner table together when his mom's heart went into cardiac arrest, and one of them had been trained to do CPR.
It sounds like CPR is absolutely worthwhile, based on the statistics you quoted - there's a 10x or more improvement in success rate from immediate CPR. However, that CPR needs to be immediate. The obvious conclusion is that more people should be trained in CPR techniques.