Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation on Television — Miracles and Misinformation

Abstract

Background. Responsible, shared decision making on the part of physicians and patients about the potential use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) re-quires patients who are educated about the procedure's risks and benefits. Television is an important source of in-formation about CPR for patients. We analyzed how three popular television programs depict CPR. Methods. We watched all the episodes of the televi-sion programs ER and Chicago Hope during the 1994– 1995 viewing season and 50 consecutive episodes of Rescue 911 broadcast over a three-month period in 1995. We identified all occurrences of CPR in each episode and recorded the causes of cardiac arrest, the identifi-able demographic characteristics of the patients, the un-derlying illnesses, and the outcomes. Results. There were 60 occurrences of CPR in the 97 television episodes — 31 on ER, 11 on Chicago Hope, and 18 on Rescue 911. In the majority of cases, cardiac arrest was caused by trauma; only 28 percent were due to primary cardiac causes. Sixty-five percent of the car-diac arrests occurred in children, teenagers, or young adults. Seventy-five percent of the patients survived the immediate arrest, and 67 percent appeared to have sur-vived to hospital discharge. Conclusions. The survival rates in our study are sig-nificantly higher than the most optimistic survival rates in the medical literature, and the portrayal of CPR on tele-vision may lead the viewing public to have an unrealistic impression of CPR and its chances for success. Physi-cians discussing the use of CPR with patients and fami-lies should be aware of the images of CPR depicted on television and the misperceptions these images may fos-ter.