Only about 15 percent to 30 percent of people whose hearts stop get potentially lifesaving help from bystanders — a "woefully inadequate" rate, the American Heart Association said on Monday.
The group called for a unified effort by the public, educators and policymakers to get more people trained to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR.
"Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation rates are woefully inadequate, resulting in an enormous missed opportunity to save lives from cardiac arrest," said Dr. Benjamin Abella, clinical research director for the Center for Resuscitation Science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
With an estimated 166,200 people dying from sudden cardiac arrest outside a hospital every year in the United States, the need is real, Abella and colleagues said in a statement on behalf of the association published in its journal Circulation.
They cited studies that indicate only 15 percent to 30 percent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims get any kind of CPR from a bystander before emergency medical services personnel show up.
For every minute without CPR, a patient's chances of surviving fall by up to 10 percent.
"Quick initiation of CPR, as well as providing high quality CPR, is crucial to survival," Abella said in a statement.
"What's needed is a two-pronged approach: first, substantially increase the number of bystanders trained in CPR who then provide CPR during an actual emergency and second, improve the quality of training and actual CPR performance through measures of its effectiveness," he added.
Sudden cardiac arrest is often caused by a type of irregular heartbeat called ventricular fibrillation. The heart quivers so that it cannot pump blood properly.
CPR can keep blood moving until a device can be used to shock the heart back into proper rhythm.
"In communities where widespread CPR training has been provided, survival rates from witnessed sudden cardiac arrest associated with ventricular fibrillation have been reportedly as high as 49 percent to 74 percent," Abella said.
"Unfortunately, on average, approximately six percent of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest victims survive to hospital discharge in the United States."
People fail to learn or administer CPR for many reason -- fear of infectious disease, fear of litigation and fear not doing it right, Abella said. Proper training can overcome all these fears.