Texas Students Set World Record for CPR Training

At 10 a.m. Tuesday, 100 school buses began unloading students for a record-setting event at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX. By 11:45 a.m., a Guinness official had declared the city the new world record holder for CPR training with 4,626 participants.

Previously, Oslo, Norway held the world record for the largest CPR training session with 3,692 participants.

"This world record shows our commitment to increasing knowledge about CPR and growing the survival rates for cardiac arrest victims in our schools, homes and communities," said Mayor Robert Cluck in a prepared statement.

According to a city press release, the Arlington students gathered on the football field to view a CPR instructional DVD on the Jumbo-Tron, and walked through the training using manikins to do chest compressions and rescue breathing.

Since the city's "CPaRlington" program began in 2005, more than 25,140 Arlington residents have been trained in CPR, the city reports. The program got rolling when Mayor Cluck, a physician, met with representatives of the American Heart Association (AHA), Arlington Fire Department and the UT-Arlington School of Nursing to discuss an initiative that could improve cardiac arrest survival.

The program aims to improve cardiac arrest survival by teaching 10% of the city's population how to perform CPR utilizing the self-directed training program CPR Anytime developed by AHA in collaboration with Laerdal Medical Corporation.