London, Aug 1 (IANS) Children as young as nine can be trained to perform emergency life-saving procedures like cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on people suffering cardiac arrest.
According to a study, though kids as young as nine may lack the physical strength, they can be trained to perform CPR — to provide a continuous flow of oxygen to the lungs and brain until the person regains consciousness.

A team led by Fritz Sterz, Medical University of Vienna (MUV), Austria, studied 147 schoolchildren, who had received six hours of life support training. Four months later, 86 percent of them performed CPR correctly.

“The usefulness of CPR training in schools has been questioned since young students may not have the physical and cognitive skills needed to perform such complex tasks correctly,” said Sterz.

“We found that, in fact, students as young as nine years are able to successfully and effectively learn basic life support skills. As in adults, physical strength may limit depth of chest compressions and ventilation volumes, but skill retention is good.”

The skills taught to the children included automatic defibrillator deployment, providing CPR, usage of the recovery position and calling for the emergency services, said a MUV release.

These findings were published in the open access journal Critical Care.