Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive tune may help revive stopped heart

Hollywood, CA, October 19: A University of Illinois medical school research has suggested a promising and rapid treatment to help jump-start a stopped heart - using rhythm.

A small but intriguing study from the Illinois medical school doctors and students has suggested that the Bee Gees’ 1977 disco hit "Stayin' Alive", at 103 beats per minute, could help people stay alive when they get cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), if their rescuer knows its rhythm.

The researchers, who included David Matlock, MD, of the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, Ill., thought that "Stayin Alive" has almost the perfect rhythm that is similar to the pace recommended by American Heart Association for chest compressions given during CPR.

When administering CPR to a heart attack victim, the perfect rhythm is 100 compressions per minute and the catchy, sung-in-falsetto tune from the 1977 movie “Saturday Night Fever” clocks in at an almost perfect 103 beats per minute, Matlock said.

In the study to be presented on October 27 at the Scientific Assembly of the American College of Emergency Physician's annual meeting in Chicago, 15 adults, including medical students and physicians, were trained to perform CPR to the beat of Stayin' Alive. They were asked to time their chest compressions to the beat while listening to the song on iPods.

Five weeks later, participants took a CPR test without the music. They were told to think of the song while performing compressions. The trainees said they felt they were better and more confident at CPR while listening to the music, note the researchers.

"Some in the study didn't have any intrinsic rhythm," Matlock said, "but the averages were within the guidelines." Initially, the average number of compressions was 109 per minute then it was 113, which is more than recommended. But, Matlock said that giving a few extra compressions per minute is better than too few when it comes to trying to revive a stopped heart.

"Properly performed CPR can triple survival rates for cardiacdefine arrestdefine, but many people hesitate to jump in because they don't feel confident about maintaining the proper rhythm," Matlock says in a news release. "Our research subjects felt that listening to "Stayin' Alive" improved their ability to perform chest compressions at the proper speed, and indeed their performance even five weeks later was excellent," Matlock says.

The findings are "encouraging" but Matlock said larger studies are required to determine the link.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is a procedure to support and maintain breathing and circulation for a person who has stopped breathing (respiratory arrest) and/or whose heart has stopped (cardiac arrest). CPR is part of the emergency cardiac care system designed to save lives.