We've all seen it done in the movies and TV, some one collapses and stops breathing and a passerby or medic performs CPR and miraculously they come back to health coughing and spluttering, but do you know how to do it? ....And hand on your heart would you like to perform mouth to mouth on a complete stranger? We'll you mightn't have to with a new technique that was developed at the University in Arizona and reported to triple the survival rate. This technique involves hard and fast compressions (at least 100 chest compressions per minute) on the chest cavity as the main priority with a person who collapses from cardiac arrest. By doing the chest compressions as a priority even before putting in a breathing tube paramedics have found that the patients suffered less brain damage as the blood was still kept flowing around the body and to the brain by force of the chest compressions. It was found that it was very easy for the average man or woman to use this technique (in as quick as half an hour) as there was no having to remember the ratio of breaths to compressions and also the fact of using mouth to mouth put a lot of people off doing CPR. It should be noted that this technique should only be used in the event of a suspected cardiac arrest and never used on children...and people collapsing from blocked airways by food or near drowning, for these cases the new technique won't work and the old CPR technique should be used. |
