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.

CPR steps- C- A- B

In CPR, C stands for compression, a represents airway and B is for breathing. It is important that you are aware of CPR basics especially on how to place your hands on the chest for compression, compression depth, compression rates and the ratio of rescue breaths to compressions. The American Heart Association advises people to go for CPR classes and use below steps as a reference.

Step 1: consciousness check

Shake the patient gently or tap him/ her and shout on him, ‘are you okay?’ if the person has a back or neck injury, don’t shake them otherwise you might worsen the situation. If the patient fails to respond, do the following: for children and adult, who have reached puberty, call emergency services by calling 911 and start CPR immediately. For babies below puberty age, start CPR together with rescue breathing for two minutes. Then call 911 and get an AED in case there is one available.

Step 2: begin chest compressions

For older children or adults above puberty age, kneel next to them and locate the breastbone using your fingers and place your two finders at breastbone tip. Give compressions using both hands and stack you hand on top of the other one. Fingers should be laced together and raise the fingers to avoid touching the chest. Your arms should be straightened, elbows locked and your shoulder center should above your hands. Pressing should be done in steady rhythms using the weight of your body. For untrained persons, they should give about 100 chest compressions per minute. For a trained person, he should start rescue breaths immediately.

Rescue breaths

People who are untrained are encouraged to give just the chest compressions as studies have shown that CPR is quite successful when administered alone without rescue breathing. In addition, rescue breathing is much more important in babies and children than adults. Start by giving 30 compressions and then two rescue breaths. This cycle should be repeated until the person starts to breath normally.

Using the automated external defibrillator

Automated external defibrillators are machines which are programmed to deliver electrical shock safely to a collapsed person or a heart patient. The machines comes instructions to follow and they are found in public places. All the CPR steps should be followed before the defibrillator machine is used. These machines have computers placed inside and you will always get instructions on the next thing to do.