Compared with white individuals, those who are Black or Hispanic are about 25% less likely to receive bystander CPR when a cardiac arrest occurs at home, new data show. They also are 41% less likely to have a bystander attempt CPR on them for a cardiac arrest in public.

“We already know that Black and Hispanic individuals with an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are less likely to survive to discharge than whites. We also know that individuals who get bystander CPR . . . from loved ones, from random strangers and passersby, doubles or triples the odds of surviving to discharge,” said Paul S. Chan, MD, cardiologist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, MO. “Differences in bystander CPR rates for cardiac arrests in public does raise additional issues of implicit and explicit bias that need to be better understood.”

Chan’s study, scheduled for presentation at the upcoming American College of Cardiology (ACC) 2022 Scientific Session, also found that the racial disparities in acting on CPR were not explained by where the cardiac arrest occurred or by income level.

Read the full TCTMD article: Bystander CPR for Cardiac Arrest Woefully Rare in Black and Hispanic Individuals