American Heart Association: New CPR Guidelines

In an effort to get more bystanders to perform CPR, the American Heart Association issued new guidelines today changing the way it teaches the lifesaving technique by eliminating mouth-to-mouth breaths.

When an adult collapses, bystanders are to call 9-1-1, then start hard, fast compressions at the center of a victim’s chest until paramedics arrive.

This is an easier, less complicated way to aid a person with sudden cardiac arrest. You don’t have to remember all the steps of traditional CPR – checking the airway, tilting the head, remembering the number of compressions to alternate with the number of breaths.

People don’t do CPR for a variety of reasons, including that they’re not trained or they think they’ll break a rib. Then there’s the “yuck factor” of putting their mouth on a stranger’s.

Experts found that pumping the heart is the most important piece to help the victim, and they want bystanders to do it.

“We want people to know we think it’s OK for them to help even if they’ve never been trained,” said Dr. Michael Sayre, an emergency-room physician at Ohio State University Medical Center and chairman of the heart association’s committee writing the recommendations.

If you’re alone when someone collapses, he said, compress the victim’s chest until EMS arrives, even if you get tired. If someone else is around, “after a couple minutes they can trade off,” Sayre said.

In Columbus, he said, only about one-quarter of the people who collapse from sudden cardiac arrest get CPR. Doing chest compressions immediately will double or triple a person’s chance of surviving.

“So, if people are even doing that, they’re doing the most important part,” said Capt. Dave Roggenkamp, a paramedic with the Columbus Division of Fire.

After Arizona paramedics began using compressions-only CPR, the survival rates tripled for adults suffering sudden cardiac arrest, according to results published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The heart association’s new guidelines should not be used on infants, children or adults whose cardiac arrest is from respiratory causes such as a drug overdose or near-drowning.

Comments

[soccerdad]

I've taken CPR twice, but it's been a few years. I remember thinking how incredible it was that someone could act as another's heart and lungs (for a limited time.)

I find this interesting. Doing both compressions and mouth to mouth obviously will be more tiring than just compressions. I guess that's part of the calculation here too.

[Gail]

I had to take it several times for my job (RN). Our instructors were very obsessive-compulsive about us getting it right. We had resusi-Annie dolls with print out graphs and we had to press the chest down exactly right - not too hard and not too soft, plus get the breaths in at perfectly spaced intervals. We practiced for hours. I remember that it was exhausting.

I ended up spending most of my nursing career in oncology and never needed to actually do CPR on anyone. My patients were generally DNRs.