Manual Versus Mechanical Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: A Case Against the Machine.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) quality, including chest compression rate, depth, and fraction of hands-on time, is integral to cardiac arrest survival. Introducing mechanized devices to target these measures of quality in the challenging prehospital environment holds great promise. Comparing mechanical to manual CPR, animal models deliver favorable results on markers of perfusion and manikin studies demonstrate improved consistency of high-quality CPR performance with device use. Factoring in real-world application with prospective randomized human trials; however, repeatedly fails to show improvements in patient-centered outcomes and thus cannot be supported by current scientific evidence.