Dispatcher-assisted telephone cardiopulmonary resuscitation using a French compression-only protocol: performance of volunteers with or without prior life support training

Although early bystander-initiated cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a key factor in survival improvement from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, only one-third of victims actually receive CPR before arrival of emergency medical services. Dispatcher-assisted telephone CPR might improve the frequency and performance of bystanders' resuscitation efforts. Due to the recent interest in hands-only CPR protocol [1] and the lack of any French validated algorithm, we designed the present study in order to validate a new French protocol called ALERT (Algorithme Liegeois d'Encadrement a la Reanimation par Telephone).