Online CPR Certification Blog

According to Dr. David Newman, the decision as to whether to administer CPR should not be at all automatic. Dr. Newman was of the opinion that CPR should be thought of as a burdensome as well as a punishing procedure. He said that although it may be appropriate in some situations, it was highly inappropriate in others.

The are old and chronically ill people who say in advance that they would not want any medical interventions like the CPR to be used in them in an attempt to prolong their lives.

CPR was created to act as a rescue technique for those who believed that the heart should not be left to die that easily. The argument was that an individual who developed a sudden and temporary cardiac arrest as a result of arrhythmia had a reasonable chance to make a recovery if doctors or people close to them could immediately get to restart their heart again. This is according to Dr. Newman

Jeffrey Pellegrino a medical officer and a member of the Red Cross organization gave a practical example where CPR can be administered without any questions. He said if a seemingly healthy person happened to collapse e.g. at an airport and seemed to be showing no signs of life in them, then a CPR can be administered by a person who knows how to do it  with immediate effect. Pellegrino also added that cases where an individual has been hit by lighting or has been saved from drowning are other situations where CPR can be administered without questions.

Chest based CPR vs Mouth based CPR

With recent research indicating that chest based CPR is just as efficient as the mouth to mouth based CPR, the ‘American Heart Association’ (AHA) as well as the Red Cross have both advised people who are unable to conduct full CPR to conduct chest compressions. This is done by laying your hands at the centre of the patient’s chest. With one hand on top of the other, push quickly and hard without being concerned about how hard you are pushing. As you do this you should aim at making approximately one hundred compressions within a minute. Keep at this until an emergency medical officer arrives at the scene.

For a CPR to be effective in saving a life, someone needs to respond very fast to the victim and then call 911. The responder’s job at this juncture is to offer CPR to the victim. Upon arriving at the scene, the rescue 911 team can use an ‘automated external defibrillator’ i.e. (AED) and shock the victim’s heart in an attempt to bring it back to its normal rhythm. The victim can thereafter be rushed to the hospital and be put on a life support.

A research study conducted in the year 2000 revealed that a program undertaken to train security guards of a casino to perform CPR in combination with AEDs showed that 53% of patients to whom the CPR and AED procedures had been done survived to be discharged from the medical centers they had been taken.