Accuracy of breathing and radial pulse assessment by non-medical persons: an observational cross-sectional study

Early recognition of cardiopulmonary arrest (CPA) expedites emergency calls and resuscitation and improves the survival rate of unresponsive individuals. However, the accuracy of breathing and radial artery pulse assessment by non-medical persons is poorly understood. The aim of this study was to determine the accuracy of breathing assessment and radial pulse palpation among 450 non-medical personnel using a high-fidelity simulator. We examined the accuracy of 10 second’s assessment for breathing and radial pulse using a high-fidelity mannequin simulator, included 496 non-medical participants (school teachers) between 2016–2018. For a primary results, the sensitivity for the detection of the presence of the breathing and radial pulse was 96.2% (97.5% for sensitivity and 92.0% for specificity) and 91.7% (99.1% for sensitivity and 56.8% for specificity), respectively. Futher, breathing rate and radial pulse rate were strongly correlated with the assessments, with Spearman’s correlation coefficients of 0.813 (P < 0.001) and 0.719 (P < 0.001), respectively. In contrast, radial pulse strength was weakly correlated with the assessment (coefficient of 0.288, P < 0.001). Our results suggested that non-medical persons would show high accuracy in detecting and measuring respiration and radial pulse, although they did not accurately determine radial pulse strength for the early recognition of CPA.