▲ The 'Chul-dong Chilboz' team from the Suwon Nambu Fire Station performs CPR during the 15th Gyeonggi-do Citizen CPR Competition held at the Gyeonggi Human Resource Development Institute in Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, on April 28.
The survival rate for patients who suffered sudden cardiac arrest in the first half of last year reached 9.4%, marking a slight increase compared to the previous year.
In particular, the survival rate was 2.7 times higher when a bystander performed CPR before the patient arrived at the hospital compared to cases where it was not performed, demonstrating that initial response has a critical impact on a patient's survival and recovery of brain function.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) announced the results after completing an investigation into 16,045 cases, or 98.9%, of the 16,229 sudden cardiac arrest cases that occurred in the first half of 2025.
The analysis showed that 1,501 patients were discharged in a surviving state after being transported for sudden cardiac arrest, recording a survival rate of 9.4%.
This figure is 0.2 percentage points higher than the 9.2% recorded in the first half of 2024.
The survival rate for sudden cardiac arrest patients has been on a steady upward trend, following 7.3% in the first half of 2022 and 8.8% in the first half of 2023.
However, the number of cases where patients were discharged with brain function recovered enough to perform daily activities independently was 1,001, with the brain function recovery rate standing at 6.2%, down 0.2 percentage points from the same period the previous year.
The rate of CPR performed by bystanders, excluding paramedics and medical professionals, was 32.9%, accounting for 4,500 cases.
The bystander CPR rate has also been continuously increasing, from 29.2% in the first half of 2022, 29.8% in the first half of 2023, and 30.2% in the first half of 2024.
The effectiveness of CPR performed by bystanders was confirmed by statistics.
The survival rate for patients who received CPR from bystanders was 15.3%, which is 2.7 times higher than the 5.6% survival rate for those who did not.
The brain function recovery rate was also 11.5% when bystanders performed CPR, which is 3.5 times higher than the 3.3% recorded when it was not performed.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.