Part 11: Pediatric Basic Life Support and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Quality 2015 American Heart Association Guidelines Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care

This 2015 American Heart Association (AHA) Guidelines Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and Emergency Cardiovascular Care (ECC) section on pediatric basic life support (BLS) differs substantially from previous versions of the AHA Guidelines.1 This publication updates the 2010 AHA Guidelines on pediatric BLS for several key questions related to pediatric CPR. The Pediatric ILCOR Task Force reviewed the topics covered in the 2010 International Consensus on Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care Science With Treatment Recommendations and the 2010 council-specific guidelines for CPR and ECC (including those published by the AHA) and formulated 3 priority questions to address for the 2015 systematic reviews. In the online version of this document, live links are provided so the reader can connect directly to those systematic reviews on the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) Scientific Evidence Evaluation and Review System (SEERS) website. These links are indicated by a superscript combination of letters and numbers (eg, Peds 709). We encourage readers to use the links and review the evidence and appendices. A rigorous systematic review process was undertaken to review the relevant literature to answer those questions, resulting in the 2015 International Consensus on CPR and ECC Science With Treatment Recommendations , “Part 6: Pediatric Basic Life Support and Pediatric Advanced Life Support.”2,3 This 2015 Guidelines Update covers only those topics reviewed as part of the 2015 systematic review process. Other recommendations published in the 2010 AHA Guidelines remain the official recommendations of the AHA ECC scientists (see Appendix). When making AHA treatment recommendations, we used the AHA Class of Recommendation and Level of Evidence (LOE) systems. This update uses the newest AHA Class of Recommendation and LOE classification system, which contains modifications of the Class III recommendation and introduces LOE B-R (randomized studies) and B-NR (nonrandomized studies) as …