The response of community staff to a person experiencing cardiac arrest can be critical to saving that individual’s life. UK ambulance services respond to approximately 60,000 cases of suspected cardiac arrest each year and resuscitation is performed during approximately 28,000 of these calls; unfortunately, less than one-in-ten people actually survive long enough to be discharged from hospital (British Resuscitation Council, 2015).

Current British Resuscitation Council (2015) guidelines recommended that basic life support consists of two elements: mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compressions. The aim of this article is to challenge the need for so-called ‘rescue breaths’ within cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).