Meaghan Mercer’s article in Medscape today, Shock — Administered Uninterrupted Chest Compressions, is probably registration-protected, so I’m sorry if you aren’t a member and can’t read the whole thing. Here’s the nut graph, though:

When clearing the patient for defibrillation, this causes an interruption in chest compressions causing the central perfusion pressure (CPP) to drop, and it can take more than one minute of good-quality chest compressions to restore them to pre-pause levels. CPP has been found to be the best single predictor of ROSC, with values less than 15mmHg predicting a failure. Therefore, we are greatly increasing the morbidity and mortality of our patients with each second off the chest. Circulation published the article “Hands-On Defibrillation, An Analysis of Electrical Current Flow Through Rescuers in Direct Contact with Patients During Biphasic External Defibrillation,” in which they investigate the amount of leakage voltage and current to a rescuer receives during defibrillation. They found that the current measured in the rescuer’s body ranged from 19 to 907µA. In most cases, the leakage current measured below recommended safety standards and none of the rescuers felt a shock.

I’ll translate that for you: you know that scene in every TV show and movie where someone yells “clear!” and then everyone else moves back? Yeah, maybe not so much anymore. We’ve been kicking this around at work for the past year or so, and we’re all kind of curious about whether or not it actually changes anything, but speaking as someone who has caught a piece of 360J once upon a time and didn’t feel right for about an hour afterwards, I think I’m going to wait for someone else to try this first…