'Open Secret' of CPR: It's Usually Futile

A palliative care physician dispels some myths in the 'New Yorker'
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 12, 2023 10:45 AM CDT
'Open Secret' of CPR: It's Usually Futile, Violent
The proper technique is demonstrated on a CPR dummy.   (Getty / microgen)

A palliative care physician's in-depth look at CPR in the New Yorker may leave you thinking differently about the procedure. As depicted in the movies or on TV medical dramas, the procedure is both heroic and easy, and it almost always works, writes Sunita Puri. "But it is an open secret in medicine that CPR is both brutal and rarely effective," Puri adds. A jarring stat to back that up: Roughly 85% "of those who receive it in a hospital die, their last moments marked by pain and chaos." Yes, it works in select cases—think Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills, who was brought back to life on a football field. But he was young and healthy, and his heart stopped after a sudden injury, not a progressive disease.

Puri makes the case that far too many very sick people are receiving CPR because families expect it, even demand it, and doctors haven't been properly trained to navigate end-of-life conversations with loved ones—and specifically to convey the limitations of CPR. Yes, it may pull someone back from the brink of death, but it usually won't fix the underlying medical problem, and it may just prolong a patient's agony. Puri recalls performing CPR on a dying cancer patient for 40 minutes as a resident: "I felt his breastbone give way beneath my hands with a sickening crack, like the sound of a branch snapping in two." She recounts similar stories from others, calling them a "grim rite of passage" for many physicians. It's time, she writes, to start having serious conversations when CPR should and shouldn't be used. Read the full story. (Or read other Longform stories.)

Stories to sink your teeth into.
Get our roundup of longform stories every Saturday.
Sign up
Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X