Compression-only or standard cardiopulmonary resuscitation for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

This meta-analysis aims to compare chest compression-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CO-CPR) with standard CPR (sCPR), which includes mouth-to-mouth ventilation, as potential strategies for managing out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). We systematically searched various databases and registries such as MEDLINE, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and Clinicaltrials.gov to retrieve relevant studies. We used the revised Cochrane “Risk of Bias” tool for randomized trials (RoB 2.0) to assess the risk of bias in included studies. Revman 5.4 was used to pool dichotomous outcomes under a random effects model. A total of 4 randomized controlled trials were included in our meta-analysis. Our results indicate that CO-CPR was associated with a significantly increased survival to hospital discharge compared to sCPR [relative risk (RR) 1.22, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.01 to 1.46] with minimal heterogeneity (I2=0%). No significant difference was observed between the two groups regarding 1-day survival (RR 1.07, 95% CI: 0.94 to 1.23), survival to hospital admission with a good neurological outcome (cerebral performance category 1 or 2) (RR 1.10, 95% CI: 0.80 to 1.51), return of spontaneous circulation (RR 1.05, 95% CI: 0.95 to 1.17), and survival to hospital admission (RR 1.08, 95% CI: 0.93 to 1.25). This meta-analysis found that chest CO-CPR significantly improves survival to hospital discharge compared to sCPR for managing OHCA, while yielding comparable results for other resuscitation outcomes.