Music Can Help Save Lives

During CPR, you should push on the chest at a rate of 100 to 120 compressions per minute. The beat of “Stayin’ Alive” is a perfect match for this.

In a new study, Dr. Yoshihiro Yamahata, of Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, and his colleagues tried using new songs to instruct a group of newly hired nurses to perform CPR. The researchers presented their findings this week at the AHA meeting in Chicago.

​"The quality of CPR is the key to [helping] the victim recover," Yamahata said. "Our solution to master adequate CPR skills is to put the educational words on several famous songs with 112 bpm and 8 beats" per measure, he said.