The 2025 AHA guidelines are still the work of the classroom.

The 2025 American Heart Association Guidelines for CPR and Emergency Cardiovascular Care landed last October. The science is not the same as the skill. The skill is what a provider can still do when the room is loud and the clock is moving.

AHA Instructors were required to complete the official 2025 Guidelines Instructor Update by February 28, 2026. The Science In-Service exists so working clinicians can see the changes without waiting for a full recert cycle. This week the Association posted August 11, 2026 change notices against ACLS instructor and provider manuals and the reference cards. If you teach, read the notice before the next class. If you take the class, ask which edition is on the table.

A few of the updates that change how a room should feel: routine mechanical CPR is not recommended — the devices have no documented benefit as standard care. Choking care now starts with back blows for adults, children, and infants. The two-finger infant compression is out. Cardiac arrest is treated where the patient is found; rolling with CPR in the box is the exception, not the plan. Epinephrine did not change. Naloxone for suspected opioid overdose must not delay compressions and a real airway.

The number that should bother an educator: only about four in ten adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrests get bystander CPR, and an AED is applied in public in a little more than one in ten. Guidelines do not close that gap. Repetition does.

Wystepek Ventures, LLC teaches to the current AHA, AAP, and NAEMT materials — BLS, ACLS, PALS, Heartsaver, and the rest of the calendar. This note is education, not a protocol. Follow your medical director and the manuals in your hands.