Hum Posted October 18, 2010 Share Posted October 18, 2010 For years, anyone learning CPR -- emergency resuscitation -- was taught the "ABC": Check the airway for blockages, give breaths, then circulate the blood. New guidelines issued Monday by the American Heart Association turn that alphabet on its head, punctuating a shift that has led emergency responders to emphasize compression of the chest over all else when treating victims of cardiac arrest. The new catch-phrase is "C-A-B" -- as in start pushing on the chest before doing anything else. The AHA guidelines also uphold a 2008 recommendation that untrained responders call 911 but then forget rescue breathing completely, and simply press on the victim's chest until help arrives. Going a step beyond that, the 2010 guidelines "strongly recommend" that 911 dispatchers guide callers in "compression-only" CPR, sometimes known as CCR. However, medical professionals and trained lay people are still urged to give the victim two "rescue breaths" in between each series of 30 chest compressions. All the changes apply only to adult victims who collapse of cardiac arrest; artificial respiration is still recommended for children and for adults in a few cases, including near-drowning and drug overdose. The science behind the changes is simple. In an adult who has been breathing normally, for several minutes even after cardiac arrest there is enough oxygen in the bloodstream to maintain the heart and brain, as long as compressions circulate that oxygen. In this scenario, pausing to provide oxygen through rescue breaths is not only unnecessary, but harmful because it requires the rescuer to stop pressing on the chest for at least several seconds. Dr. Gordon Ewy of the Sarver Heart Center at the University of Arizona, who led some of the first animal studies on CCR, says rescue breaths can also be harmful because they cause lower air pressure in the chest cavity, which slows down circulation -- the most important element in the whole process. The new guidelines also call for faster and more forceful compressions than in the past. The new standard is to compress the chest at least two inches on each push, at a rate of 100 compressions per minute. full article Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mokthraka Posted October 18, 2010 Share Posted October 18, 2010 Makes sense. Or you could get 2 people! One to breath and the other for compression Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts