Changes to the European Resuscitation Council guidelines for adult resuscitation

On 28 November 2005, the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) published new guidelines for the resuscitation of adults and children [The full guidelines and the consensus document can be downloaded from the European Resuscitation Council website (www.erc.edu)], replacing those from the year 2000. These new guidelines were developed following a 2-year review of published evidence by experts worldwide culminating in a Consensus on Science meeting in January 2005. The consensus statements were published in November 2005. This article aims to summarize the main changes contained within the new adult resuscitation guidelines and to discuss the rationale behind them. It follows the structure of the ERC-published summary of changes. Levels of evidence (LOE), where mentioned, are those used by the ERC and have been detailed in Table 1.