Monday, October 18, 2010
No more mouth-to-mouth?
No,not kissing—saving a life. I don’t know about you, but if I saw a really creepy person on the ground, I might not be big on the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation thing.
Now, because of a persuasive study, many docs think starting the chest compressions immediately and keeping them up can be as or MORE effective as the tipping back the head, sealing your lips on, puffing, and so on, then the chest.
However, the American Heart Assn just came out with sort of a hybrid idea, making the mouth-to-mouth combined with chest compressions thing easier, but not eliminating the mouth-to-mouth.
Committee! I bet one was involved!
Push hard and fast in the center of the chest until help comes. If trained in CPR, give 30 chests, then two breaths.
But what about the study that showed that chest-only resulted in better survival rates?
Apparently, the breaths are still better for near-drowning and drug situations.
The docs involved in both the study and the guidelines passed this off as “evolution” not “revolution.”
Oh, whatEVER! If I am faced with this, I am hitting the chest. You decide for yourself.
The guideliness say the compressions should be at the pace of the BeeGee’s “Stayin’ Alive.”
Besides being a bad and probably inadvertent pun, I consider advice like that particularly useless.
Try counting 100 a minute. Push in at least 2 inches in adults and kids, 1.5 inches on a baby.