Resuscitation decisions vary from individual to individual, factors that are frequently involved include the clinical indicators of the chance of success, as well as the patient's mental status. Resuscitation can deliver a person from the brink of death. It can restore a person to his or her prior lifestyle within a few weeks, with only bruises and soreness as reminders of the ordeal. However, for most patients, the outcome of CPR is not so positive. Most patients who die following resuscitation do so within the first few days.
Some patients die despite repeated resuscitation over a period of hours.
Some who are successfully resuscitated face a long, difficult recovery, and some never resume their normal daily activities. Others survive with serious physical impairment or brain damage. With varied and often conflicting attitudes about the role and responsibilities of the patient's physician, staff physicians, nurses, patients, families, and overall about the goal of treatment itself, there has developed a need for a mechanism by which decisions about resuscitation can be made. Recent legal developments such as living wills and Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare complicate further the decision making process. When cardiac arrest occurs unexpectedly or there has been no advance deliberation of the appropriateness of resuscitation, CPR is almost always attempted because the alternative for the patient is death.