If someone suffers from a cardiac arrest in your presence, you may be able to save that person's life and preserve their brain function by rapidly applying cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
In 2005, the American Heart Association simplified its CPR guidelines, recommending more chest compressions and relatively fewer mouth-to-mouth ventilations. However, this new method still requires tiring effort and rather complex coordination between chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth respirations.
The sad fact is that most people still will not initiate CPR, even when they have been trained to perform it. First, because mouth-to-mouth ventilation can be unpleasant, and many people are afraid they will get some kind of infection from performing it. And second, many people correctly recognize that they never knew or have forgotten how to administer CPR properly.
But now there's some good news for all the timid CPRers out there: Performing chest compression alone reaps results that are almost as good as chest compression plus mouth-to-mount ventilation. This useful finding was demonstrated by two large studies published this year in a December issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Both studies found no significant difference in survival rates of people given either chest compression alone or the conventional CPR procedure. These outcomes were not as good, however, if an ambulance crew took more than 15 minutes to arrive at the scene, especially when chest compression alone was administered.
Chances are you'll never encounter a person in the midst of a cardiac arrest as you walk down the street. But you should be prepared to give chest compression if your spouse, another family member, or a close friend has significant coronary heart disease.
Lots of online sources have instructions in CPR, or contact your local Red Cross, community college, hospital, or high school for classes near you.
Unfortunately, the survival stats are poor for people who have CPR for a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital. But when no other help is available, administering CPR correctly may improve a person's chance of surviving more than simply standing by helplessly and doing nothing.
Last, if you remember nothing else from this entry, remember this: The very first thing to do when someone is having a heart attack is to be certain that you or another bystander immediately calls 911 to summon an ambulance.
No matter how expertly you may perform CPR, the sooner trained medical personnel and equipment are on the spot, the better are the person's chance of surviving the episode.
