Part 13: Pediatric Basic Life Support 2010 American Heart Association Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care

For best survival and quality of life, pediatric basic lifesupport (BLS) should be part of a community effort that includes prevention, early cardiopulmonary resuscita-tion (CPR), prompt access to the emergency response system, and rapid pediatric advanced life support (PALS), followed by integrated post – cardiac arrest care. These 5 links form the American Heart Association (AHA) pedi-atric Chain of Survival (Figure 1), the first 3 links of which constitute pediatric BLS. Rapid and effective bystander CPR can be associated with successful return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) and neurologically intact survival in children following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.1–3 Bystander resuscitation may have the greatest impact for out-of-hospital respira-tory arrest,4 because survival rates 70 % have been reported with good neurologic outcome.5,6 Bystander re