Purpose of review: The current review will give an overview of different possibilities to monitor quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) from a physiologic and a process point of view and how these two approaches can/should overlap.
Recent findings: Technology is evolving fast with a lot of opportunities to improve the CPR quality. The role of smartphones and wearables are step-by-step identified as also the possibilities to perform patient tailored CPR based on physiologic parameters. The first steps have been taken, but more are to be expected. In this context, the limits of what is possible with human providers will become more and more clear.
Summary: To perform high-quality CPR, at first, one should optimize rate, depth and pause duration supported by process monitoring tools. Second, the evolving technological evolution gives opportunities to measure physiologic parameters in real-time which will open the way for patient-tailored CPR. The role of ultrasound, cerebral saturation and end-tidal CO2 in measuring the quality of CPR needs to be further investigated as well as the possible ways of influencing these measured parameters to improve neurological outcome and survival.