Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure involving chest compressions (pressing down on the chest) and artificial respiration (rescue breathing). It has the power to restore blood flow to someone suffering cardiac arrest, keeping them alive until an ambulance arrives.

Why get trained?

Once the heart stops pumping, seconds count. For every minute that passes without help, a person's chance of surviving drops by about 10%. But if you know how to respond to a cardiac arrest, a person's odds of survival and recovery may increase by 30% or more.

Learning CPR is easy and inexpensive – just a few hours could make an important difference in someone's life. Find out about the different kinds of CPR courses available.

Since most cardiac arrests happen at home, you could be saving the life of a family member or friend.

For every one minute delay in defibrillation, the survival rate of a cardiac arrest victim

decreases by 7 to 10%. After more than 12 minutes of ventricular fibrillation, the survival

rate of adults is less than 5%