Our country seems to have recently come under a bevy of natural disasters and calamities that leave us in a frenzied panic when we come across people in need of emergency medical assistance. When we see people passing out or passed out along the way, we must do our part and try to help them. In such situations, it is very important for one to know Basic Life Support techniques, the most basic of which is Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), because there is always a high degree of certainty that somebody will suffer a Cardiac Arrest on the scene.
CPR is meant to revive the functions of the brain, heart, and lungs before brain death occurs within 10 minutes. When performing the aforementioned technique on an unconscious victim, we have to remember that there is a proper procedure to be followed and enact it accordingly. The first and foremost of these procedures is to make sure to obtain the consent of the victim if he is conscious, or of the relative if the patient is unconscious. Once you have permission to help, you can proceed to check on the status of the patient by checking on his responsiveness and the ABC’s: Airway, Breathing, Circulation.
You can determine the consciousness of the victim by getting into a knee squat position near his head and shoulders. Tap him on the shoulders twice and loudly ask if he is okay. His level of consciousness will depend upon his response. Some responses to look out for are alertness, response to verbal stimuli, pain stimuli, or the victim will simply be unresponsive. Make sure to ask somebody to call 911, find a rescue person, or go to the nearest place that can offer you help with the victim.
Once you have determined his response level, you can now begin to check his airway by physically checking for obstructions in his mouth, nose, trachea, and lungs using the head lift, chin lift technique. If you do not see any obstructions, you can spend the next 5 seconds checking for breathing. In order to properly check for breathing, you have to place your eyesight level with his chest and check for the breathing pattern or rise and fall of the victims chest. You have to listen for breathing or feel for the breathing by placing your face close to the victims nose and mouth.
If there is no sign of breathing, you must initiate what is known as the IVM or Initial Ventilatory Maneuver. This means that you will perform mouth to mouth resuscitation by delivering to air blows into the victim’s mouth. Proceed to do the ventilation check within 10 seconds by placing 2 fingers on the carotid (neck) pulse artery. If the victim remains pulse less and breathless, check the victim for any visible signs of injury or bleeding before repeating the procedure, only this time do external chest compressions to help restart the heart before performing the breathing technique.
An external chest compression is done by applying 30 pressure blows to the lower half of the sternum. This is followed by tilting the victims head and opening his mouth while pinching his nose shut before administering 2 breaths. If the chest fails to rise and the patient does not breath, repeat the procedure. Once the pulse is restored to the victim, but he remains breathless, continue to do the respiratory breathing technique by applying the Initial Ventilatory Maneuver again.
Once both breathing and circulation has been restored, place the victim in a safe position and stay with him until help arrives. Always remember that even though we can help a victim by applying CPR when necessary, it is also important to know the instances wherein we should avoid enacting CPR. Do not try to perform CPR when the surround area and situation proves to be too dangerous to complete the procedure safely. Avoid performing CPR if the victim has any bleeding or serious wounds on his body. Most importantly, do not perform CPR on a victim who has a spontaneous pulse but not breathing.
Also, do not perform CPR when it is obvious that the patient’s body displays obvious signs of tissue death. Remember to stop CPR when you have restored breathing and circulation in the victim or if medical personnel or a doctor arrives at the scene. If you already feel too tired to go on or the situation deteriorates into a life threatening situation, stop performing CPR.
Work Cited
“Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR): First aid“. MayoClinic. com. 16 January 2006. 24 October 2007. <http://www. mayoclinic. com/health/first-aid-cpr/FA00061>.