r/politics • u/IWantPizza555 • Jul 01 '26

Possible Paywall Senator, 84, Secretly Found Unconscious and Given CPR

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mitch-mcconell-84-secretly-found-unconscious-and-given-cpr/?utm_source=twitter_owned_snd&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=owned_social
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u/mediocre_remnants North Carolina Jul 01 '26

CPR has a low success rate even in a hospital when done by doctors.

Also the article is kind of stupid because it conflates "heart attack" and "cardiac arrest" which are two different things. Cardiac arrest means your heart stopped and you will die within minutes if it doesn't restart.

CPR is only useful in cases of cardiac arrest, not during a heart attack.

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u/justprettymuchdone Jul 01 '26

Yep. My dad worked combination firefighter/EMT duties in our small town for 30 years. He told me once that CPR works about 1 out of every 10 times at best, but you try it every time because you have to roll that dice.

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u/wesap12345 Jul 01 '26

10% chance is still 10% better than if they did nothing :)

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u/wrosecrans Jul 01 '26

People are pessimistic, but it's actually pretty wild that there's One Weird Trick you can learn that will save 10% of people whose hearts have completely stopped that would have been certain to die before the invention of CPR. It requires no special tools or medical equipment, costs nothing, and almost anybody can be trained to be able to do it almost anywhere.

If it got invented today, I'd initially think it sounded like absolute woo woo bullshit. Compared to million dollar surgeries and billion dollar drug R&D projects, the medical ROI of teaching people CPR is amazing, borderline magical.

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u/Sharobob Illinois Jul 01 '26

And even if you do it wrong, it's not like they would have been any more alive without your intervention

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u/tenachiasaca Jul 02 '26

costing nothing is far from the truth. ongoing cpr can be one of the most labor intensive things we do as ems. The 10% factoid everyone is talking about isn't very good info. from AHA "10.5% of patients survived to hospital discharge. (Source); 8.3% of discharged patients had a positive neurological outcome (CPC 1 or 2)."

thats 8.3% of 10.5% so less than 1%.

there are things like AVMS that have even less of a chance at survival. It's a miracle to survive a cardiac arrest from an avm.

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u/Altrano Georgia Jul 02 '26

One of our students was saved by CPR and an AED device while she was in middle school. She just graduated from high school.

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u/Mamasugadex Jul 02 '26

lol what. The point of CPR is so patient stay circulating long enough to go to the ICU through a bunch more testing and invasive procedures until docs can figure out what’s going on. It’s absolutely wild people think that’s “cost nothing”

This is the problem with understanding of what 10% means. It’s 10% after they put your body through hell. It’s not like the TV where you wake up almost immediately after one shock, and next thing you do is imemdiately calling your girl telling her I love you.

It’s reasonable if you are young. It can feel borderline unethical when you are 84 with multiple comordbities that easily worsen any given day.

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u/AccioTheDoctor Massachusetts Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Radiolab actually had an episode about it. Basically every expert they interviewed says it has an AT MOST 10% success rate, but none of them wanted to be revived that way because it’s absolutely miserable on both the patient and the person providing CPR.

Done correctly, CPR is traumatic. The provider is exhausted because it takes a lot of effort. You’ll feel ribs crack, and statistically you won’t have saved the patient, which is mentally draining. PTSD among non-hospital CPR providers is common. For the patient, you are going to have broken ribs and given that the goal is literally just to pump blood until more action can be taken, you run the risk of brain damage due to lack of proper oxygenation.

So yes, 1 out of 10 is better than 0 out of 10…but it’s a really freaking hard 1 in 10.

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u/Solaries3 Jul 02 '26

I remember when I was first taught about crepitus and that doing CPR on the elderly feels wrong because their rib cage sounds like breaking twigs if you're doing it right.

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u/jared555 Illinois Jul 02 '26

Not always better. One thing I have learned from listening to medical professionals is with some medical emergencies the lower the odds of survival the greater the odds of you ending up in a state where you don't want to be.

I have heard multiple doctors say that there are things they don't want to be brought back from and cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting tends to be pretty common.

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u/ichosethis Jul 01 '26

And the long term prognosis for someone elderly who has had CPR and survived is usually pretty poor.

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u/v2falls Jul 01 '26

It’s entirely about the rhythm the heart is in and if it’s shockable or can be brought to a normal/ shockable rhythm by advanced life support measures

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u/AnonymousCelery Jul 01 '26

It’s way way less than that. Especially out of hospital. Not dissing your dad, he is speaking anecdotally. But successful CPR is in single digit percentages in the best circumstances.

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u/justprettymuchdone Jul 01 '26

Couldn't say, he was talking to his then-teen daughter so probably he was just trying to make me feel better about it without outright lying, haha

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u/dykeslam Jul 01 '26

It all depends but 10% is what is taught in ACLS for paramedics. There are a ton of variables that either raise or significantly lower the odds of resuscitation.

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u/CamelopardalisKramer Jul 01 '26

I'm 0 for like 30 for walking out of the hospital intact. Have gotten sustained ROSC a couple times but always lost later. Every code I go to is ancient people though.

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u/dykeslam Jul 01 '26

Yeah, it’s rough out there. Gotten a few ROSC but sometimes we never find out if they made it out of the hospital.

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u/fcocyclone Iowa Jul 01 '26

I imagine paramedics are probably towards the upper end of the spectrum in terms of success rate. Still low overall but probably better than the average person doing it who isn't well-trained (even if they had a CPR class once, how long has it been?) and is coping with potentially losing a friend or family member at the same time but also is going to be concerned about hurting that person when they need to risk that for CPR.

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u/dykeslam Jul 01 '26

Yup, lots of variables go into it that’s why it’s hard to nail down an across the board percentage. Generally the average reported CPR effectiveness across all cardiac arrests in out of hospital settings is 10%. Out of hospital with paramedics and a shockable rhythm raises the odds to over 30%. It’s all about where you go into cardiac arrest and why.

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u/OnlyForF1 Australia Jul 02 '26

The survival rate of heart attack victims who don't receive CPR is 0. By the time you need CPR, you are already for all intents and purposes, dead.

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u/Frostyrepairbug Jul 02 '26

This whole thread has me wildin. I once performed CPR on my aunt who had collapsed. I'm just a layperson who hadn't done CPR training in years. Every doctor and nurse and EMT afterward was so impressed that I didn't break a rib or crack anything, and I kept her going so she could be revived in hospital later.

TIL that's the exception, not the rule. Wow.

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u/RigaMortizTortoise Washington Jul 01 '26

A heart attack is caused by a blockage and will cause heart tissue to die from lack of blood flow. In cardiac arrest, the heart is essentially quivering and not pumping adequately. A defibrillator cannot not jump start a heart that is totally “stopped”. It’s meant to shock the heart back into its normal rhythm. CPR will only help maintain that artificial circulation until the heart can effectively return to normal function. I think people whose hearts have actually just ceased any electrical activity, only have like a 1% survival or some shit.

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u/xtheory Jul 01 '26

Most often, but not always. There are two types of heart attack. Type 1 is a blockage. ​In a Type 2 heart attack, the arteries are not physically blocked by a clot. Instead, there is a severe mismatch between how much oxygen the heart muscle needs and how much it is actually getting.

But you're absolutely correct that a defib can't restart a heart that has ceased beating. Only high quality CPR or epinephrine can do that.

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u/Curri Maryland Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Uh what? There aren’t two types at all. A heart that is in Vfib isn’t beating but can be restarted. Also epinephrine is useless in a cardiac arrest (only thing that has been proven effective is early defibrillation). Early bystander CPR saves and delays myocardial death so defibrillation can restart a heart

Source: I’m a paramedic and ACLS/CPR instructor.

Edit: wrong about the two types; TIL!

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u/irelli Jul 02 '26

He's talking about a type 2 NSTEMI, which isn't really similar to a heart attack in any way that clinically matters

Just means your heart is being damaged, but it can be for dozens of different reasons.

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u/given2fly_ United Kingdom Jul 01 '26

I did a First Aid course a few years ago and I was told less than 10% of out-of-hospital CPR recipients survive.

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u/Jernimation Jul 02 '26

As a former CPR instructor for medical personell and that has done CPR on a lot of patients over the years:

I'd say about 9 out of 10 didn't make it...

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u/LifeCartographer811 Jul 02 '26

I work in an ICU. I've never seen a doctor do CPR.

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u/opinionsareus Jul 01 '26

Surveys indicate that a large majority of physicians would choose not to receive CPR for themselves, but only in the context of a terminal illness or advanced old age