Push Hard, Push Fast

I'm a CPR instructor and I've been teaching the "new CPR to professionals for two years now. It makes total sense when you get into it. Makes us wonder why we weren't doing it a long time ago. Now here's further validation of the new method in practice:
From the Seattle P-I:

Known as "cardiocerebral resuscitation," or CCR -- that method has
tripled survival rates and dramatically decreased brain damage in
Arizona adults rescued by paramedics after suffering sudden cardiac
arrest.

Sudden cardiac arrests that occur out of hospitals kill more than
450,000 Americans every year -- second only to all cancers combined.

Survival
rates from performing traditional CPR -- combining chest compressions
with mouth-to-mouth breathing or mechanical ventilation -- have
remained dismal for decades, at 5 percent or lower, whether performed
by trained paramedics or untrained bystanders.

Paramedics using the old CPR -- which calls for mechanical
ventilation and electric shock before doing chest compressions -- were
able to save only 1.8 percent of cardiac-arrest victims.

But
after training in the new CCR technique -- which requires 200 chest
compressions first, then a single shock followed by 200 more chest
compressions, with delayed ventilation -- the survival rates jumped
threefold, to 5.4 percent.

The figure measures survival of the patient to actual discharge from the hospital, not just getting to the hospital.

Department of Yikes!

The first national study of four common sexually transmitted diseases
among girls and young women has found that one in four are infected
with at least one of the diseases, federal health officials reported
Tuesday. Nearly half the African-Americans in the study of teenagers ages 14 to
19 were infected with at least one of the diseases monitored in the
study — human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes and trichomoniasis, a common parasite. The 50 percent figure compared with 20 percent of white teenagers,
health officials and researchers said at a news conference at a
scientific meeting in Chicago. -- New York Times for the full article.