While you’re at home, something happened and someone you care about suddenly went into cardiac arrest. You call 911, of course, but you are concerned that professional help just may not arrive in time. You know that when blood circulation or breathing stops, every passing second counts. You know that oxygen deprivation of the brain, if allowed to last from four to seven minutes, usually lead to permanent, irreversible brain damage and even death. You haven’t undergone any CPR training yet, so what do you do in this kind of emergency situation? According to the American Heart Association (AHA), you should perform hands-only or external cardiac compression CPR immediately. In fact, since you are untrained, this may be the only CPR technique that you can safely do on your own while waiting for the professional rescuers to get there and take over.
Here is how you can properly administer chest compression CPR:
1. Make sure the cardiac arrest victim is positioned on his or her back on a hard, flat and even surface, then kneel near his or her neck and shoulders.
2. Place the heel of one hand over the victim’s sternum or breastbone. Place the other hand on top of the first hand and interlace your fingers. If the victim is a baby or a toddler, use two fingers in place of your hands. Make sure that your shoulders are directly over your hands to give you sufficient leverage when you push.
3. Extend your elbows and use your weight to press down hard on the victim’s chest. Your aim is to compress the victim’s chest at least two inches inward. Release and allow the chest to recoil. Repeat the press-and-release cycle.
4. Press hard and fast non-stop at a rate of 100 compressions per minute. To help you stay in pace with the required compression rate per minute, the AHA recommends that you play the “Stayin’ Alive” Bee Gees song in our head so that you can push in sync with that song’s tempo of 103 beats per minute. If there is somebody else with you, try to change places every 2 to 3 minutes to prevent fatigue due to the fast pace of the chest compression CPR until medical help finally arrives, or until you see clear signs that the victim has recovered from the cardiac arrest.
When you administer chest compression CPR, you are from the outside basically just manually pumping oxygenated blood inside the victim’s chest from the heart to the aorta and from there to the brain and other vital organs. The aim is only to delay the onslaught of tissue damage until more advance first aid procedures can be administered by a trained professional rescue worker. By itself, there is no assurance that a timely hand-only CPR will save a victim from death or permanent brain damage. In cases where the cardiac arrest is caused by arrhythmia or rapid and irregular heart beats, chest compression CPR will only give a narrow window of opportunity until electric shock from an automated external defibrillator (AED) can be made applied by the 911 call responder to induce the heart to re-establish its normal beat.
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