The following is a summary of “Comparison of chest compression quality between the overlapping hands and interlocking hands techniques: A randomized cross-over trial,” published in the December 2023 issue of Emergency Medicine by Marquis, et al.

Giving good chest compressions is an important part of treating cardiac arrest. For a study, researchers sought out which of two hand positions—overlapping or interlocking—is better for applying chest compressions during cardiac arrest. It was a prospective, controlled, open-label, cross-over, single-center study called HP2C (for Hands Position and Chest Compression). 

People from the prehospital firefighter teams and the emergency medical service (EMS) teams were asked to take part. They were given the choice of starting chest compressions with hands that overlapped or hands that interlocked. After a break, they used another method. The total chest compression success score, made by software following ILCOR guidelines, and the quality of the compression, release, rate, and emotional strength recorded with the Borg scale were used to make the decision.

100 people took part in the study. The carers were 38 years old on average, with a 9-year range. It was 79.5% IQR [48.5–94.0] for the hands that were overlapped and 71% IQR [38.0–92.8] for the hands that were joining (P-value = 0.37). There was no real difference for the other categories, especially when it came to how hard they were working. But there was a shift towards better results when hands crossed over each other. During cardiac resuscitation, the study did not show a difference in how well overlapped and interlocked hand chest compressions worked.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0735675723004576