Research in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) has historically concentrated on chest compression quality, defibrillation strategies, and airway management. In contrast, manual ventilation—despite its critical role—has often been overlooked. However, growing evidence suggests that ventilation quality has a significant impact on patient outcomes. Furthermore, the absence of standardized monitoring has made manual ventilation a potential source of bias in clinical studies. Particularly when the quality of ventilation differs across groups but remains undocumented. This has led some researchers to refer to it as the “black box of unmeasured intra-arrest ventilation.”
The lack of accessible measurement devices
One of the main reasons for this data gap has been the lack of accessible, field-usable devices capable of monitoring and recording ventilation parameters during resuscitation. This is particularly true in prehospital emergency medical services (EMS). This is where EOlife provides a key advantage.
EOlife is a compact ventilation feedback device that calculates key ventilation parameters in real time. These include insufflated volume, tidal volume, respiratory rate, and leakage ratio. It is easy to use in the field, making it an ideal solution for both improving ventilation quality. Additionally, it is useful in generating research-grade data.
EOlife, the only Ventilation Feedback Device (VFD) to display the volume of gas reaching the patient’s lungs (Tidal Volume).
CE-marked and FDA-cleared medical device enabling real-time calculation of insufflated volume, tidal volume, and ventilation frequency. It provides visual feedback to deliver ventilation following ERC or AHA recommendations.
First manual ventilation dataset generated with EOlife
In a recent publication—“Dataset of bag-valve-mask ventilation parameters in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cared for by basic life support teams”, published in Data in Brief—the Paris Fire Brigade research team demonstrated the use of EOlife in a real-world clinical setting. They collected detailed ventilation data during CPR provided by Basic Life Support (BLS) teams on patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). This work represents one of the first publicly available datasets. It accurately reflects manual ventilation practices in prehospital care.
The authors of the study highlight the novelty of this dataset. It offers a descriptive and analytical view of ventilation practices based on real, field-collected parameters. Such data are essential to:
- better understand current ventilation behaviors in BLS teams,
- identify patterns or deviations from guidelines,
- and ultimately guide the optimization of ventilation strategies during CPR.
The ability to objectively measure ventilation quality not only supports research integrity—by reducing confounding factors—but also enables continuous quality improvement in EMS systems. EOlife thus serves a dual purpose: it improves care and strengthens the scientific foundation upon which future guidelines can be built. Practices can also be built upon this foundation.
As clinical research begins to take a more holistic view of resuscitation quality, EOlife is positioned as a critical tool to shed light on one of the most under-measured components of CPR: manual ventilation.
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References
(1) Wittig J, Krogh K, Orlob S, Løfgren B, Lauridsen KG. The black box of unmeasured intra-arrest ventilation. Resuscitation. 2024;195:110015.
(2) Bruno Tassart, Daniel Jost, Frédéric Lemoine, Alexandre Petermann, Marina Salomé, Emma Menant, Benoit Frattini, Justin Liscia, Sabine Lemoine, Stéphane Travers, Dataset of bag-valve-mask ventilation parameters in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cared for by basic life support teams,Data in Brief, Volume 60,2025,111620,ISSN 2352-3409