NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Victims who survive after their heart has stopped beating have a better quality of life if they received cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) at the time of the cardiac arrest from a bystander, new research shows. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of survivors receive such CPR.

"The study results add to the current knowledge that receiving CPR improves survival rates and quality of life," lead author Dr. Ian Stiell, from Ottawa Health Research Institute, in Ontario, Canada, said in a statement. In the current study, only 14 percent of survivors received bystander CPR. This statistic "has not changed over the 10 years that we've studied cardiac arrest in Ontario," Stiell noted. "We think that bystander CPR is being sadly overlooked."

The findings are based on a study of 316 patients who experienced cardiac arrest in an Ontario community between 1995 and 2000 and were still alive one year later. Quality of life was assessed in 268 of these patients using a standard questionnaire.

The results are reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Overall, the patients had a quality of life comparable to that seen in the general population. Further analysis revealed that receiving bystander CPR and being younger than 80 years of age were both tied to having a "very good" quality of life.

The investigators note that this study, which is the "largest ever" conducted in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survivors, "clearly shows that these patients have good quality of life, and is the first to demonstrate that citizen-initiated CPR is strongly and independently associated with better quality of life," the investigators note.

The findings also suggest that communities with low bystander CPR rates should invest more resources in promoting this practice, they conclude.