When a person’s heart stops, their odds of survival are greater if a bystander immediately performs CPR.

But having someone step in during this critical moment is not all that matters.

A new study has uncovered dramatic differences in outcomes based on the race and sex of the people who went into cardiac arrest and got CPR. White people were three times more likely than Black people to survive the episode, and men of any background were twice as likely to survive as women, researchers found. In all of these cases, CPR was administered by someone other than a first responder.

The findings published this week in the American Heart Association journal “Circulation” confounded researchers examining outcomes for the life-saving technique and opened up a new array of questions they're hoping to explore.

USA Today talked to Dr. Paul Chan, the study's lead author and cardiologist at Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute, about the group's findings and what questions researchers have going forward.

Read the full USA Today article: Black People, Women Less Likely to Survive After CPR for Cardiac Arrest