This news is a couple days old, but the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation's new CPR guidelines are out. Various groups like the American Heart Association should start teaching the new guidelines in the near future. Probably in the spring.

The new guidelines are simpler, to aid in memory retention and to improve real world success. No more ABC check, and chest compressions to ventilation ratio is now 30:2, from infants through adults. If someone is unconcious, not moving, and not breathing (ignoring occasional agonal gasps), then start CPR. Actually, these changes have been in the works for quite a while, but now they're official.

Some experts argue that the guidelines should be simplified even more to just compression-only CPR, and there is evidence to support that technique, but I think that's too radical a change for the scientific/medical community to make all at once, since there is also evidence that shows that ventilation is also important.

Anyway, for those you who haven't gotten a CPR refresher in a long time (me included) you should consider doing it sometime early next year when the new guidelines are being taught.

If you'd like to check out the new CPR guidelines in all its scientific, medical journal glory, you can view it for free here , along with a ton of other new ILOR recommendations on issues like advanced life support, stroke treatment, etc. based on the best evidence available today.