Cardiopulmonary resuscitation has a shockingly low success rate outside of hospital settings, with roughly only ten percent of people who receive chest compressions from a bystander actually surviving the ordeal.

A closer look

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation has a shockingly low success rate outside of hospital settings, with roughly only ten percent of people who receive chest compressions from a bystander actually surviving the ordeal. Hollywood movies wildly misrepresent the procedure by showing patients miraculously coughing up water and jumping back to life after two minutes of gentle chest tapping. In reality, doing CPR correctly requires so much physical force that you will frequently snap the patient’s ribs or sternum, meaning a successful rescue generally involves crushing a stranger's chest cavity. It is a brutal, exhausting, and statistically grim medical intervention that looks nothing like a romantic movie scene, but it is still marginally better than letting someone legally expire on the sidewalk