Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)

What Is It?

When a person's heart stops beating (cardiac arrest), blood stops flowing through the body and death occurs. CPR refers to the use of drugs, artificial breathing, pushing on the chest and electric shock to restart the heart.

What about Terminal Illness and CPR?

If an otherwise healthy person suffers cardiac arrest and CPR is started immediately, that person can sometimes be brought back to life and resume that life with normal function. But it doesn't happen nearly as often as you'd think from watching television shows. That's why some hospitals have replaced the "Do not resuscitate" order (DNR) with the "Do not attempt resuscitation" (DNAR) order. DNAR says more clearly that an attempt to resuscitate in no way guarantees survival.

And even if CPR is "successful," which means the heart is restarted, that doesn't guarantee other body functions or consciousness are restored. A patient may be left with serious brain damage or the failure of other organs. What most of us would call successful CPR is extremely unlikely in the case of a person who is elderly, weakened by disease, or terminally ill. About 15% of all hospitalized patients who receive CPR survive to leave the hospital, and the number of older or sicker patients who survive or get any meaningful improvement from CPR is much smaller.

What Are the Drawbacks of CPR?

	If resuscitation fails, the last minutes of life will be filled with activity over which the dying person has no control and with the family kept away, when there could have been a peaceful death surrounded by family
	May result in broken bones or other injury
	May result in permanent unconsciousness/coma if blood flow to the brain has been stopped for too long

Does a Do Not Resuscitate order (DNR) mean that the medical team won't do anything for me?

Some people have the idea that saying, "Do not resuscitate" is the same as saying, "Do not treat." But the fact is that you can decide you don't want CPR attempted if your heart stops, and still choose to have comfort measures and other treatments continued. It's your decision to make. One advantage of deciding about CPR when you're in relatively good health is that it allows you to communicate clearly with your health care team about a full range of treatment choices you might make.