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David Halliwell presents the science of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Resuscitation means lots of things to different people – compression, CPR, mouth to mouth, ventilation, return to normal and reanimation all come to mind. But how and why does resuscitation really work – let David explain. This talk uses a case study approach to discuss why resuscitation practitioners should focus upon technical accuracy when resuscitating, focussing on all the facets of a resuscitation, compression, decompression, trans-thoracic impedance. Two points David would like you to take away: 1) Blood flows from high to low pressure even when the heart stops beating and 2) Blood doesn’t flow through the heart during systole. David talks about the two big theories of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The first is the heart squeeze theory – that being chest compressions will pump blood out of the heart and around the body. This is as opposed to the thoracic pump theory which states blood flows due to a pressure gradient and by changin