Tokyo, March 18 Chest compression may work better than mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for patients who have suffered a cardiac arrest and are in need of immediate help, Japanese researchers say.

Ken Nagao, who led a team of researchers at Surugadai Nihon University Hospital in Tokyo, studied about 4,000 cases where bystanders tried to resuscitate adults who had suffered cardiac arrest.

They found that the chance of surviving a cardiac arrest away from a hospital was twice as high if bystanders performed chest compression instead of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, reported health portal Medical News Today.

First aid workers are currently advised to employ both mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions. But such compressions need to be administered continuously and consistently, and researchers say breaking off to carry out mouth-to-mouth could put the victim at greater risk.

If the patient had collapsed because of a heart problem instead of a lung problem, he or she would probably already have enough oxygen in the body to keep them going without needing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the researchers said.

Gordon Ewy, director of the Sarver Heart Center at the University of Arizona in the US, where a chest compression-only resuscitation technique was developed, was quoted as saying that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation may often be harmful.(IANS)