Skip disco music for CPR lessons

Listening to the song Disco Science while giving CPR helps rescuers keep the rhythm but the music isn't effective enough to warrant changing first-aid guidelines, researchers say.

Various tunes such as the Bee Gees' 1970s hit Stayin' Alive and the 1950s children's song Nellie the Elephant have been proposed as a tool for health workers learning cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR. 

At an Australian ambulance conference in Auckland, New Zealand, 74 people volunteered to put the songs to the test on a training dummy. Half of the participants had received CPR in the previous year.

In this week's issue of the Emergency Medicine Journal, Prof. Malcolm Woollard of the faculty of health and life sciences at Coventry University in the UK and his co-authors reported the results. 

The proportion of volunteers who maintained compressions within the optimal range of 100 to 120 a minute was significantly higher with the music than without.

The beat findings were:

• Mirwais' Disco Science, 82 per cent.
• Billy Ray Cyrus' 1992 country hit Achy Breaky Heart, 64 per cent.
• No music, 65 per cent.

But when it came to the key factor of compression depth, over a third of the compressions given were too shallow. They are supposed to be five to six centimeters deep to be effective.

"When considering the combined importance of correct depth and rate, the authors are unconvinced that music provides any benefit in improving the quality of CPR compared with a metronome or audible feedback, suggesting that that this interesting but unproductive area of resuscitation research should be discontinued," the study's authors concluded.