Metrics save lives: value and hurdles faced.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Affirmation of the importance of precision in fundamentals of resuscitation practices with improving neurologically intact survival from sudden cardiac arrest, correlated with both measurements of resuscitation metrics generically and recently further refined metric parameters specifically. RECENT FINDINGS: Quality of baseline cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in historic intervention trials may not be 'high quality' as once assumed. Optimal chest compression rates are within the narrow spectrum of 106-108/min for adults. Optimal ventilation rates remain within the 8-10/min range. SUMMARY: Although traditional CPR teaching of 'hard and fast' chest compressions has promoted a relatively easy to remember directive, the reality is that laypersons and medical professionals alike may unwittingly provide markedly suboptimal chest compression depths and rates. Prior resuscitation studies that focused upon airway adjuncts, defibrillation strategies, and/or pharmaceutical interventions that did not simultaneously gauge the underlying CPR chest compression rates, chest compression fraction of time, and ventilation rates should be cautiously interpreted in light of discovery that assumption of 'high-quality CPR' without measurement of the metrics of such is likely a faulty assumption.