Prone cardiopulmonary resuscitation: Relevance in current times

Abstract

The most common and recommended position for performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is the supine position. However, clinicians may encounter situations when patients suffer cardiac arrest in prone position. Prone CPR has been described previously in a number of settings, most commonly intraoperative. In the current COVID-19 era, with more patients being nursed in prone position, an increase in the incidence of cardiac arrests requiring prone CPR is expected. Hence most of the resuscitation guidelines have made prone CPR a vital component of their recommendations. To date, most of our health-care workers have limited knowledge about prone resuscitation and the literature surrounding it. Nonetheless, with the current evidence at hand, it seems to be a reliable method of providing resuscitation and all health-care workers should be well versed with it. Thus, the goal of this narrative review is to try and fill the gaps in our knowledge about prone CPR. Literature search was done on PubMed, Medline, EMBASE using keywords 'CPR', 'Resuscitation', 'Prone Position', 'Prone', 'Prone CPR'.

Keywords: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation; prone CPR; prone cardiac arrest.