Bag the Breathing

I've never done mouth-to-mouth breathing, not in either my personal or professional life. I have always been lucky in that, whenever we have had to initiate CPR, someone has usually shown up with the ambu-bag really early in the process.

So I read from KevinMD who linked to news that, perhaps, not only is it not harmful to omit this step, it might actually be doing harm to perform rescue breathing:

Studies showed that because current CPR guidelines call for mouth-to-mouth ventilations, the majority of people would not perform CPR on a stranger, partly out of fear of contracting diseases. Research by UA Sarver Heart Center member Karl B. Kern, MD, and others found that even if bystanders are willing to perform mouth-to-mouth ventilation, it takes too much time away from chest compressions, which have to be continuous to improve the chance of survival.

Here's a one-page pdf document for bystander CPR.

There are some notable exceptions to the "Bag the Breathing" idea, especially drownings, child/infant CPR (where most cardiac arrests are caused initally by respiratory problems such as drowning or choking) or drug overdose.