Highlights of the 2025 AmericanHeart Association Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care

These Highlights provide an overview of the major updates and key issues presented in the 2025 American Heart Association (AHA) Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and Emergency Cardiovascular Care (ECC). The 2025 Guidelines represent a comprehensive revision of the AHA’s recommendations across adult, pediatric, and neonatal life support, resuscitation education science, systems of care, and ethical considerations in resuscitation. They are designed to help resuscitation professionals and AHA instructors focus on the most impactful, debated, or practice-changing recommendations in resuscitation training and clinical application. Each recommendation is supported by its underlying rationale. As this publication serves as a summary, it does not include the primary research references or detail the Classes of Recommendation and Levels of Evidence. For complete information, readers should consult the full 2025 Guidelines and Executive Summary, published in Circulation (October 2025), along with the 2025 International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) Consensus on Science with Treatment Recommendations, published concurrently in Circulation and Resuscitation. Detailed methodologies used by ILCOR for evidence assessment and by the AHA for guideline development are also published elsewhere. The 2025 Guidelines apply the latest AHA definitions for each Class of Recommendation and Level of Evidence. In total, 760 specific recommendations are included across adult, pediatric, and neonatal life support, resuscitation education, and systems of care. Of these, 233 are Class 1, 451 are Class 2, and 76 are Class 3 recommendations—comprising 55 identified as having no benefit and 21 associated with potential harm.