In telephone assisted, advanced medical priority dispatch system (AMPDS) driven, lay-rescuer, compression-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (COCPR) it remains unclear whether the instruction "push as hard as you can" improves compression depth. This was a prospective, experimental, double-blinded, randomized, controlled, parallel group study to compare the depth of chest compressions achieved following the instruction "push as hard as you can" and the recommended guidelines. Primary outcome was defined as compression depth. Secondary outcomes were defined as...

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There is an on-going discussion on quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) as related to guideline target values for chest compression depth. Deeper compression depth is generally understood to be more effective. Interestingly, the American Heart Association (AHA) guideline requests a compression depth of "at least 5cm" whereas the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) guideline requests "at least 5 cm, but not to exceed 6 cm". It is unknown which recommendation is more effective to achieve a correct compression depth. This study attempted to determine the...

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