Basic research on cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an important part of modern CPR, which is of great importance for the analysis of relevant mechanisms, improvement of existing CPR strategies and discovery of new therapeutic targets. This paper mainly reviews the current hot topics in basic research of CPR, such as treatment measures during resuscitation (external cardiac compression, drug therapy), post-resuscitation treatment measures (target temperature management and drug therapy), post-resuscitation brain injury mechanism and prognosis assessment, in order to provide reference for basic and clinical research of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.