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(Circulation. 2000;102:I-371.)
© 2000 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorials

The Most Important Changes in the International ECC and CPR Guidelines 2000

Richard O. Cummins, MD; Mary Fran Hazinski, RN, MSN¹

Background

The release of new resuscitation guidelines has a profound effect on clinical practice and on resuscitation teaching. New guidelines produce changes in the marketing and sales of resuscitation products. New guidelines stimulate discussions and debates surrounding the evidence and the rationale. We recognize the strong possibility that many people will concentrate on just a small number of specific details and will overlook the major conceptual changes in how we developed the guidelines and in the basic principles that provide the foundation for these new guidelines. In the following sections we summarize what we consider significant revisions and innovations in resuscitation concepts and principles.

1. Resuscitation Guidelines Now Internationally Developed, Science-Based, and Evidence-Based

The Guidelines 2000 Conference was a fulfillment of important changes that have been under way since 1992.^{1 2 3} The most important changes are expressed in the subtitle of the conference name: "an international consensus on science." The conference was part of an international process, culminating in an international scientific collaboration, fulfilling a mission to produce international guidelines. In addition, for the conference to succeed as a consensus on science, participants had to be strongly committed to the principles of evidence-based guideline development.

At the 1992 guidelines conference, an international panel of experts on resuscitation set a goal to make international resuscitation guidelines as consistent as possible by the year 2000.^{1 2 3} If all scientists review the same science and evaluate it using the same criteria, they reasoned, we should come to the same conclusions and recommendations about how to resuscitate patients. This goal of a single international version of . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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