The understanding and recall of school children in Mumbai in compression only life support cardiopulmonary resuscitation

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a leading cause of mortality worldwide. Increased bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is observed in regions where school CPR training has been mandatory and led to reduced mortality by OHCA. We would like to explore the feasibility of teaching compression only life support (COLS) CPR to Indian school children through the following objectives determining their understanding of theoretical knowledge after a training session in the Indian Society of Anaesthesiologists' (ISA) COLS protocol and reviewing the information recall three months later. METHODS: The participants of this quasi-experimental study were 132 school children, aged 12 to 15. The children were all below the age of 18 and consent was obtained vicariously through the principals of the schools and assent from the students in the form of willingness to answer the multiple-choice questionnaires. The study sample comprised of participants who responded to both questionnaires, immediately post-training session and three months later. Their responses were compiled in Excel and analysed using the paired t-test and R programming language. RESULTS: None of the children had any previous knowledge on COLS. A one-hour session in COLS proved sufficient to increase the baseline knowledge with a mean post-training score by 82%. On comparing the two scores obtained, a statistically significant attrition rate was observed (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The children exhibited good understanding of COLS after a single training session. This makes us believe that more periodic revision, probably by inclusion of COLS in school curricula could be a satisfactory solution towards lowering the attrition in knowledge recall.