Emergency physician and professor William Brady, MD, wants attendees of his ACEP 2015 session on cardiac arrest management to leave with three takeaways.

First, support community efforts that teach CPR or provide automated external defibrillators (AEDs), since well-prepared and well-equipped lay providers save lives. Second, basic interventions are typically more appropriate than more complex ones in most situations. Third, always remember to note the difference between cardiogenic and noncardiogenic cardiac arrest.

Emergency physicians “manage cardiac arrest, if not every day, then every week,” said Dr. Brady, a David A. Harrison Distinguished Educator at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville. “Considering the frequent poor outcomes in patients with cardiac arrest, it’s really important for us to remain totally up to speed with what the most recent recommendations are where the science is guiding us.”

The session, “Code Talkers: A Point-Counterpoint Dialogue of Cardiac Arrest Management and What They Don’t Teach in ACLS,” will be moderated by Jeffrey Tabas, MD, FACEP, and will also include speaker Sean Kivlehan, MD. The discussion will focus on the importance of chest compressions, choosing which CPR technique to use, early defibrillation, airway management, the use of cardioactive medications, and early postresuscitative care, among other topics.

“It’s important to get the message out that the more complex interventions are not wrong or bad in many cases if not most cases,” Dr. Brady said. “But they can be wrong or they can be bad if they actually interrupt or interfere with the more basic interventions.”

Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.

Dr. Tabas

Dr. Brady

Dr. Kivlehan

Code Talkers: A Point-Counterpoint Dialogue of Cardiac Arrest Management and What They Don’t Teach in ACLS

Monday, Oct. 26
3:30–4:20 p.m.
Room 205 ABC

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