In November 2017, the American Heart Association updated the pediatric basic life support and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) quality. The new guidelines focused on the clinical value of chest compression-only CPR versus CPR using chest compressions with rescue breaths in children, rather than a comprehensive revision of the 2015 edition guidelines. The Pediatric Task Force of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation updated part content of the guidelines according to the continuous evidence review process. Guidelines recommend CPR using chest compressions with rescue breaths should be provided for infants and children with cardiac arrest. Bystanders provide chest compressions if they are unwilling or unable to deliver rescue breaths. This article mainly interprets the updated content.
In November 2018, the American Heart Association (AHA) updated Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care. Rather than a comprehensive revision of the 2015 edition guidelines, the 2018 AHA guidelines update was updated again according to the rule " the update of the guideline is whenever new evidence is available”, providing the evidence review and treatment recommendation for antiarrhythmic drug therapy in pediatric shock-refractory ventricular fibrillation/pulseless ventricular tachycardia cardiac arrest. The Pediatric Task Force of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation updated the guideline, reaffirming the 2015 pediatric advanced life support guideline recommendation that either lidocaine or amiodarone may be used to treat pediatric patients with shock-refractory ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia.
In November 2019, the American Heart Association updated guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and emergency cardiovascular care. This update is not a comprehensive revision of the 2015 version. The updates for children and newborns mainly include three aspects: ① Pediatric basic life support: A. It is recommended that emergency medical dispatch centers offer dispatcher-assisted CPR instructions for presumed pediatric cardiac arrest. B. It is recommended that emergency dispatchers provide CPR instructions for pediatric cardiac arrest when no bystander CPR is in progress. ② Pediatric advanced life support: A. The bag-mask ventilation is reasonable compared with advanced airway interventions (endotracheal intubation or supraglottic airway) in the management of children during out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). B. The extracorporeal CPR may be considered for pediatric patients with cardiac diagnoses who have in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) in settings with existing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation protocols, expertise, and equipment. C. Continuous measurement of core temperature during targeted temperature management is recommended; for infants or children between 24 hours and 18 years of age who remain comatose after OHCA or IHCA, targeted temperature management is recommened. ③ Neonatal resuscitation: A. In term and late-preterm newborns (≥35 weeks of gestation) receiving respiratory support at birth, the initial use of 21% oxygen is reasonable. B. One hundred percent oxygen should not be used to initiate resuscitation because it is associated with excess mortality. C. In preterm newborns (<35 weeks of gestation) receiving respiratory support at birth, it may be reasonable to begin with 21% to 30% oxygen.
In October 2020, the American Heart Association issued the 2020 edition of guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and cardiovascular first aid, which comprehensively revised cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency cardiovascular care guidelines related to adults, children, newborns, resuscitation education science and treatment system. According to the latest edition of International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation’s classes of recommendation and levels of evidence, relevant suggestions are put forward. This article interprets the main updated and revised content, including children’s basic and advanced life support and neonatal resuscitation, in order to better guide emergency personnel and improve the quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation and cardiovascular first aid.
As a global accidental injury, drowning has a huge spiritual and economic impact on patients, families and society. In order to improve the quality of pre-hospital and in-hospital emergency treatment of drowning, improve the prognosis, improve survival rate, and reduce the burden of drowning, in 2016, the Wilderness Medical Society drafted practice guidelines related to drowning. The first update of this guide was released in June 2019. The updated guide covers the terms of drowning, rescue and resuscitation, emergency treatment, preventive measures and other aspects. This article interprets the updated guidelines in order to provide recommendations for the first aid of drowning.
In 2019, the American Wilderness Medical Society updated and released a new version of the practice guidelines based on the practice guidelines for the prevention and treatment of acute altitude illness first published in 2010 and updated in 2014. This article interprets the guidelines, focusing on effective measures to prevent and treat different forms of acute altitude illness, as well as suggestions for specific methods to manage the disease, with a view to providing help for clinicians in better practice.
In November 2022, the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation updated the International Consensus on Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care Science with Treatment Recommendations for the sixth time. The 2022 review includes 21 topics addressed with systematic reviews by the Recovery Task Force of International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation. Among them, there are nine topics related to life support for newborns and children, including public-access defibrillation devices for children, pediatric early warning systems, maintaining normal temperature immediately after birth, suctioning of amniotic fluid at birth, tactile stimulation for resuscitation immediately after birth, use of continuous positive airway pressure for respiratory distress at term birth, respiratory monitoring in the delivery room, heart rate monitoring in the delivery room, and supraglottic airway use in neonates. The Task Force made treatment recommendations for each of the above topics after weighing evidence and discussion. In some cases, good practice statements have been provided for topics thought to be of particular interest to the resuscitation community when the evidence is insufficient to support a recommendation. Good practice statements are not recommendations but represent expert opinion. In order to facilitate the readers to understand the treatment recommendation well, in the recommendation basis part, the basic principle is briefly described. In addition, the existing problems and future research directions of each topic after the systematic reviews are also clearly stated.
Interfacility transport of critically ill children is an important part of pre-hospital emergency care. The development of 5th generation mobile networks has brought revolutionary changes to emergency medicine, which can realize real-time sharing of information between hospitals and transfer ambulance units. In order to give full play to the advantages of superior medical institutions in diagnosis and treatment technology, equipment resources, and realize the safe and fast transfer of critically ill children, the technical specifications for the construction of interfacility transport of critically ill children’s ambulances with 5th generation mobile networks are specially formulated to standardize the team building, equipment and materials, transport process and quality control requirements for critically ill children’s ambulance transport, so as to reduce the fatality rate of critically ill children and improve the prognosis.