Healthcare Triage: Basic and Advanced Life Support; One Helps. The Other, Not So Much.

Aaron Carroll

January 19, 2016

Basic Life Support (BLS) is basically CPR, and when bystanders are trained to help people suffering cardiac arrest with BLS and automated defibrillators, outcomes improve. Advanced Life Support (ALS) is a whole other story. We’ve got the research on it.

This is adapted from a piece I wrote on the Upshot about ALS and BLS. You can read more there.

@aaronecarroll

Health Policy
ALS, BLS, breast cancer, CPR, Healthcare Triage, overtreatment, Upshot

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Aaron Carroll

Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS is co-Editor-in-Chief of The Incidental Economist and tweets at @aaronecarroll. He is the Chief Health Officer at Indiana University. He is also a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Dean for Research Mentoring at the Indiana University School of Medicine. In addition to contributing regularly to The New York Times and the Atlantic, he is the author of four books, most recently The Bad Food Bible.

Healthcare Triage: Basic and Advanced Life Support; One Helps. The Other, Not So Much.

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Aaron Carroll

The Incidental Economist

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