Since the 1960's, developments in cardiopulmonary resuscitation have resulted in the savings of countless numbers of lives. More recently, the emphasis has been on increasing CPR capability through the development of prehospital emergency care systems and the involvement of the lay public in the provision of CPR. The effectiveness of this technique in the prehospital setting has been demonstrated in several community studies of patients in cardiac arrest where survival rates ranged from 11-17 percent.