Archive for September, 2013

A recent research has found that patients who suffer a cardiac arrest out of hospital are less likely to get CPR initiated by a bystander in low income black neighborhoods compared to white, high income neighborhoods.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR is the act of pushing down the chest of a patient breathing into the mouth. This technique is mostly applied in an emergency when the heart of victim stops beat and also times is breathing abnormally or the person isn’t breathing at all. CPR aims at facilitating the movement of blood to the patient’s brain in order to prevent damage to the brain. CPR can assist in keeping the victim alive until professional doctors arrive.

To resuscitate or not resuscitate

Even though most of the patients opted for the fictional patients to forego the resuscitation, it wasn’t clear whether the fictional patients had come to such a decision on their own or were advised by their doctors to skip the cardiopulmonary resuscitation. However, the study also showed that patients who participated did not think less of doctors who advise patients to forgo the life- saving efforts in case a cardiac arrest occurs.

One subject that has never been examined as it should is the effect of repeated discussions regarding code status can have on family and patients as well as providers of health care. I certainly believe that these repeated discussions regarding CPR can have a traumatic impact to family members and even a more serious impact on the patient. In addition to these impacts, the discussions can erode trust and make the whole procedure ineffective. The treating team is also highly distracted from interventions and discussions can benefit both the families and patients.

Chest compression techniques can also help pets

Janet Rosenberg, a resident of Santa Cruz Country where she works as a real estate broker, saved her dog by using the chest compressions technique and breathing into her dog’s nose. This helped in bringing the animal back to life which was at the brink of death by the time. Rosenberg said that when she saw her Italian greyhound, Pearl, hanging on a tether by the neck, she ran to the car screaming. She had intended that the tender would help in securing her dog friend in the car.

Dr. Manuel Boller of Center for Resuscitation Science at School of Veterinary Medicine and Dr. Flecher from Cornell University School of Veterinary Medicine lead a team of specialists in veterinary medicine in researching on how they can improve the success rate of CPR on pets.

Many residents tend to change their mind often after being admitted to a nursing home when it comes to being revived via cardiopulmonary resuscitation. A research published recently showed that minimum CPR data set changes puts the residents care in a great threat.