The author presents the most important changes in the European Resuscitation Council Guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) 2005 in comparison with Guidelines 2000. The new Guidelines published in November 2005 are derived from the 2005 International Consensus Conference on Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care Science with Treatment Recommendations produced by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) and published simultaneously in an issue of Resuscitation. The new Guidelines, containing 9 sections, present many changes of algorithms used in the existing guidelines targeted at the unification of recommendations in adults and in children, making the teaching of CPR easier. The publication of the new and revised treatment recommendations does not imply that current clinical care is either unsafe or ineffective.

        Key words: cardiopulmonary resuscitation – guidelines 2005 – algorithm