Mending a broken heart

By The Daily Progress

Published: October 17, 2008

All you disco fans out there will feel vindicated by this news:

It looks like the song “Stayin’ Alive” can help heart attack victims do exactly that.

Apparently, the song from the 1977 movie “Saturday Night Fever” has the right rhythm for administering CPR.

The American Heart Association recommends 100 chest compressions per minute. Dr. David Matlock of the Uni-versity of Illinois medical school showed that just listening to the song in your head can help regulate compressions.

Dr. Matlock had 15 doctors and medical students to perform CPR on a mannequin while listening to the song and time their compression to the beat. He found that they performed at about 109 compressions per minute. Five weeks later, he asked them to do CPR again, just by remembering the song. The compression rate was 113 per minute.

It’s faster than recommended, but the good doctor says that slightly too many compressions is far better than too few.

The Heart Association has been using the song in training for a couple of years, but it seems nobody had yet tested it for results.

Many people — presumably not doctors — hesitate to do CPR because they are afraid they won’t get it right. “Stayin’ Alive” helps because it’s catchy, memorable, and has that beat.

Dr. Matthew Gilbert, a resident who participated in the study, said he’d heard that a song by Queen would work just as well, and he likes the song better than disco’s “Stayin’ Alive.”

But “Another One Bites the Dust” just didn’t seem appropriate.