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Pets: New CPR guidelines created for companion animals in hopes of increasing survival rates

By Lorrie Shaw AnnArbor.com Community Contributor

Posted on Sun, Jun 17, 2012 : 6 a.m.

flickr photo by Jeremiah Ro

The rate of survival for pets that experience cardiopulmonary arrest is dismal — in fact less than 6 percent survive to the time that they are discharged from a veterinary hospital, according to the Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society (VECCS) and American College of Veterinary Emergency and Care (ACVECC).

More than 100 board-certified veterinary specialists from around the world have collaborated to develop standardized CPR guidelines for dogs and cats, in hopes of improving those numbers.

Until now, there haven't been standardized guidelines or training for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in veterinary medicine.

That's been has been a factor in the low-survival rate for dogs and cats that suffer cardiac arrest. In fact, until standardized guidelines and training were put into place in human medicine, survival rates in people were similar to animals, according to VECCS and ACVECC.

Now human survival rates are at 20 percent.

Experts decided to create the Reassessment Campaign on Veterinary Resuscitation (RECOVER), a collaborative project supported by VECCS and ACVECC in hopes that the survival rate of animals can more closely match that of humans.

Veterinary experts affiliated with RECOVER — along with physician scientists who study and treat cardiac arrest in humans — spent 18 months reviewing experimental and clinical evidence in CPR research. From there, they created a series of evidence-based CPR guidelines for dogs and cats and are hoping that more strides will be made in this area.

Click here to read more details on the new CPR guidelines.