RUKHSANA RUBEEN . NUSRAT ZAREEN . FAREENA KHAN . SALIMA RATTAN . MUFADDAL MOIZ . NIDA NOUSHEEN
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Introduction: According to the World Health Organization, about 17.3 million people died from Cardio Vascular Diseases (CVDs) in 2008. This represented 30% of all the global deaths. Out of these most were due to coronary heart disease and stroke. For patients who have a cardiac arrest, survival rates and neurologic symptoms are grave. In these conditions, early Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and early defibrillation might be useful to improve the survival and neurologic outcomes.Basic Cardiac Life Support (BCLS) refers to recognition of sudden cardiac arrest, call for help, maintenance of the airway, and supporting breathing and the circulation without using any equipment other than for personal protection.Considering these facts, the guidelines for BLS are updated every 5 years by the leading resuscitation councils, including the American Heart Association (AHA) and the European resuscitation council since the year 2000. The objective of our study was to determine the level of awareness of BLS among doctors, its practice in hospital settings and also to make them aware about the recent 2010 AHA guidelines.
Material and Method: A Cross-sectional study done at Civil Hospital Karachi.By convenient sampling 143 doctorswere included from end of August, 2011 to end of September,2011. Ethical consideration and permission granted from CHK and DUHS administration. All the On duty doctors of CHK who completely filled the questionnaires were included in this research, and all those doctors not performing duties in CHKand who were reluctant to participateand left the questionnaire incompletely filled were excluded.Dataanalyzed through SPSS 16.
Results: A total of 143 doctors participated in the study out of which 135 doctors completely filled the questionnaires which were analyzed. Out of 135 doctors only 91 (67.4%) had taken a BLS (CPR) training while 44 (32.6%) doctors had not, but had theoretical knowledge that they attained from seminars, media and by observing other colleagues.Among the trained doctors for BLS, 60.4% of the doctors were aware significantlywhile 39.6% had forgotten what they were trained for BLS. 45.46% of the untrained for BLS doctors had awareness the rest 54.54% had no awareness. Results after giving them some basic knowledge regarding BLS, 2010 AHA guidelines there was an increased awareness among the trained and untrained doctors by 77.1% and 64.1% respectively.
Conclusion: It is now essential to standardize training in Basic life support and make it a mandatory component of all medical, nursing and para-medical school undergraduate curricula. Practicing doctors should be updated regularly for new guide lines to early Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR/BLS) and early defibrillation that might be useful to improve the survival and neurologic outcomeswith cardiac arrests.