Accuracy assessment of different finger placements for cardiopulmonary resuscitation on infants

The assessment of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is important for training as well as CPR related research to validate new method or to confirm efficacy of existing one. Infant CPR, in particular, has been received great attention due to its controversy over appropriateness of or superiority between two different methods, two-finger (TF) and two-thumb (TT) CPR, suggested by the resuscitation council. Accordingly, the development of assessment tool that is capable of reliably investigating different CPR techniques has become critical. One of the most challenging task in the infant CPR is to provide consistent and accurate finger placement throughout the performance. Here, we suggest a new method to measure accuracy of the finger placement for both TF and TT CPR using manikin-integrated digital measuring system developed in the previous study. Center of forces of force sensitive resistance sensors used for assessing different finger placements were measured in each compression and scattered on 2D plane to quantitatively and qualitatively probe the finger position. The appearance of the scattered data turned out to be significantly different depending on the performance capability. In the comparison between beginners and experts, stdY and meanDist were significant parameters differentiating these two groups for both techniques, meaning beginners are poor at providing consistent forces along y direction and targeting a specific region while relatively good at balancing in x direction.