Open versus closed chest cardiac massage in non-traumatic cardiac arrest.

Since the rediscovery and popularization of closed-chest cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the early 1960s, this technique has largely replaced open-chest cardiac massage. However, in the ensuing quarter of a century, a large amount of data has been accumulated that seems to indicate that open-chest CPR is the physiologically superior method of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. This paper reviews that data comparing these two CPR modalities. The first part discusses data obtained from animal studies, while the second considers the limited amount of information that has been obtained from human investigations. The authors concludes that a randomized clinical trial of open-chest and closed-chest CPR is needed to fully evaluate the efficacy of these two resuscitative techniques as well as to define the most appropriate circumstances for the use of internal cardiac massage.