For Ahamed Idris, M.D., the path to medicine began with his service as a combat medic in the U.S. Army, for which he earned the Bronze Star for meritorious service. That was only the start of his heroic efforts to save lives. For 30 years, Dr. Idris, Professor of Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine, has pursued advances in cardiac resuscitation.

For his leadership in the field, Dr. Idris will receive the American Heart Association (AHA) 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award in Cardiac Resuscitation Science. The award will be presented in November at the 2026 Resuscitation Science Symposium in Chicago, where Dr. Idris is invited to share insights on recent advances in the cardiac resuscitation field.

Focusing on ventilation during CPR, Dr. Idris spent the first 15 years of his research career in the laboratory and the next 15 years conducting clinical trials and observational human studies.

“The key is being able to measure what you wish to study. You can’t change what you don’t measure,” he said.

Research in his lab showed that ventilation during CPR profoundly affected survival from cardiac arrest in animals. But when he attempted to expand the study to humans, he hit a roadblock because ventilation could not be measured during the early phases of CPR, when it could make the biggest difference in outcomes. His 2006 survey of over 200 EMS agencies participating in the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (ROC) network found that fewer than 10% were attempting to measure early ventilation with capnography, a technique that uses a sensor to determine the amount of carbon dioxide a patient breathes out.

Determined to find a workaround, Dr. Idris spent the next eight years developing a method to measure ventilation during CPR using thoracic bioimpedance, which tracks breaths through monitors attached to defibrillator chest pads.

“I applied this method to an ROC clinical trial that had been completed in 2015 and found that patients who had received good ventilation in the first 10 minutes of CPR had up to 400% improvement in survival with favorable neurological outcome,” he said. The study was published in Circulation in 2023.

His latest research involves using his thoracic bioimpedance techniques to measure ventilation during continuous chest compression CPR and determine its effect on outcomes.

Dr. Idris also has conducted studies that led to the adoption of the current chest compression rate guideline and the 30:2 CPR protocol (30 chest compressions followed by two rescue breaths) that is used worldwide. He continues to serve in leadership roles for the development of CPR and emergency cardiovascular care (ECC) recommendations and training programs. For the 2025 AHA CPR & ECC Guidelines, he was a member of the Basic Life Support Writing Group and the Drowning Writing Group, and he chaired the Ethics Writing Group.

Dr. Idris received his medical degree from Rush Medical College and completed a residency in internal medicine at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2003 and is a Fellow of both the AHA and the American College of Emergency Physicians.