My experience with CPR as an EMT-B over 10 or so years is 2 saves out of around 20 cardiac arrests that were run as BLS calls. Saves in this case defined as went home. The biggest determining factor for my experience was rapid notification of EMS, a lot of these calls were folks who had been down for a while and found unresponsive. Both of the saves were witnessed attacks with quick notification and transport to local definitive care. In my case that local definitive care is going away as hospitals close or beds are absorbed into larger, more distant facilities, we used to have a hospital in town and one next door giving us less than 5 minute transport times, now we' re looking at up to 15 minutes, a big difference. More rural areas of the state have much longer transport times and this is a factor, perhaps alleviated by more ALS or ALS intercept.

Pressure points have worked for me once, with a hand through a window and arterial bleed. I compressed the brachial against the bone and the flow decreased dramatically, although this poor guy probably still has my fingerprints on his arm 'cause I was afraid it wasn't going to keep working and squeezed for all I was worth.

I still carry a blowout kit in my bag and have one in reach in each vehicle, that way I can have at least a chance with the rare but quickly fatal big bleeds and punctures even on myself. I don't know about getting a TQ around my own leg while sitting in a car, for example, but at least the materials are there and I won't be trying to improvise and waste time looking for something to use.