Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a medical procedure that can be performed by anyone with some degree of formal training, on the person whose heart stops randomly. This medical procedure is done in order to prolong the working of heart and lungs till the patients receive actual medical help.
Learning CPR is very easy and yet only about 30% of the population of America actually know the correct ways of giving a CPR. There are others who either never received the formal training or have forgotten whatever they learned. There are about 88% of chances of cardiac arrest happening at home. It is said that almost 383,000 people die of heart disease in which almost half of them get a sudden heart stroke in house. Most of these victims appear healthy and have no history of heart ailments. Only with the unavailability of proper CPR can lead to unnecessary deaths. Bystander CPR when provided immediately after a cardiac arrest can increase the chances of the patient’s survival by three times; however only 32% of such victims receive the bystander CPR. Only 8% of the American population having a cardiac arrest outside house survive the cardiac arrest. The statistics is the reason enough for you to get alarmed, get a formal training of giving CPR so that you do not see some loved one dying because of an attack.
The question is, what exactly is a cardiac arrest? Well, it is not same as a heart attack. Sudden cardiac arrest is the result of electrical impulses in your heart going haywire all of a sudden and your heart beating rapidly. This chaos causes your heart to stop beating suddenly. A cardiac attack is also possible when any muscle of your heart does not receive blood on time. With the help of CPR, you can ensure that the blood supply to your heart is not cut out.
CPR works more like a link between a person having a cardiac arrest and the victim receiving a proper treatment at hospital. AHA calls CPR the “chain of survival,” which calls for a series of actions that you need to take in order to save a person’s life.
- The first step is to spot the victim; you can see that the victim will start suffering from heart pain and will have problem in breathing. You will have to give a call to 911 immediately or any other number that is valid for that community.
- The next step is to give CPR to the victim till the person is put on actual defibrillator (the device that gives electrical shock near chest region)
- The third step in this series is to press on the chest hard of the victim and keep giving him CPR.
- The next obvious step is to provide medical facility.
- The second last step is to perform a quick defibrillation. In many parts of the county, computerizes defibrillation can be availed to the victim by any lay man. If there is a possibility of this then take this step.
- The last step is to admit the victim in the hospital under a proper care and treatment.
Accept is or not, but heart arrest is one of the major cause of death in America. You can save a life from unnecessary death, only with an easy formal training. There is more than one reason to know CPR, after knowing which you will definitely take onto the formal training for CPR.
When a person suffers from a cardiac arrest, the blood supply from his heart to other body organs is disrupted. The longer it takes for blood to reach various organs, the more the risk of the victim not recovering from the attack. If the brain does not receive blood for 10 minutes, it will stop working. By giving CPR you pump oxygen into the body of the victim, which ensures the circulation of blood in the body. CPR is most effective when given immediately after the victim gets a cardiac attack.
You need to learn CPR today so that you get to know various myths attached to the process. You know, when it was asked from Americans that why they do not provide CPR to a victim, they answered that they did not know the technicalities of the process. Apart from that, they were even worried about causing harm to their own selves. They were apprehensive about getting into some legal issues, some infections and also about not performing CPR correctly. If you go through a formal training on CPR you will be free from all such myths.
CPR is not only about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Mouth-to-mouth is one more reason because of which most Americans do not undergo the training. In the year 2010 the rules of performing CPR were transformed in which it was declared that people who are not comfortable in giving mouth-to-mouth can give hands-only CPR. Hand CPR is only about compressing the victim chest without any breathing assistance. Even hands-only CPR is very effective in saving a person’s life.
The process of hands-only CPR is very easy. Just follow the steps mentioned below to the toe.
- Place the heels of your left hand on the chest of the victim; more specifically at the center of the chest.
- Place the right hand on the top of your left hand in a way that the fingers of the two hands interlace with each other.
- Press your hands down into the chest for about two inches and release your hands. You have to do this process as quickly as possible and reach a count of 100 within one minute time.
- Keep doing this process till the emergency service has arrived. You will be amazed to know that when a victim is given continuous CPR, he will survive along with a healthy brain, even if he receives a proper medical attention after 40 minutes of cardiac arrest.
You can learn this process better, if you take some formal training, which is possible, even online. At CPR123 Inc. you’ll be provided with world class training and ensure that you are ready to fight any kind of emergency.