ABSTRACT
The pioneering work of Safar et al. in 1958 ( 1 ) on airway methods of artifi cial respiration and of Kouwenhoven et al. in the early 1960s ( 2,3 ) on the closed cardiac massage with external defi brillation led to the development of modern basic and advanced cardiac life support for patients in cardiopulmonary arrest. Since these early works, several large clinical trials have been undertaken to improve survival and functional outcome in this patient population.
