Our lives can change in a heartbeat through the twists and turns of life. But we can handle these sudden, unexpected, unpleasant curveballs that life throws at us with foresight, knowledge, and preparedness. 

There will be emergency situations when we are called to step in and save lives. One such powerful tool to rescue lives is the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) technique. 

If you do not know what CPR is, or even if you’ve heard about it, or are not sure how to perform it, this article is for you. We discuss cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), why it’s important and how you can perform it. 

What Is CPR And Why Is It So Important To Know? 

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a technique that can save people’s lives in emergencies, such as cardiac arrest, heart attack or drowning. Basically, in situations where either someone’s breathing or heartbeat has stopped. 

CPR is the difference between life and death. You can save someone’s life if you know how to perform CPR in an emergency. 

For example, In America alone, 350,000 people die from cardiac arrest every year. Performing CPR for someone with a cardiac arrest can help keep them alive until professional medical help arrives. A cardiac arrest is a serious emergency that happens when there’s an electrical problem in the heart. It causes the heart to suddenly stop pumping blood across your body, leading to no oxygen to your brain. The affected person will soon fall unconscious and stop breathing. Without CPR, that person will die within a few minutes.

Research confirms that for every minute treatment is delayed, a person with cardiac arrest loses around 10% chance of survival. With increased ambulance response time, knowing how to perform CPR as a bystander is critical to saving lives in a cardiac emergency. 

Our aim is to ensure more people are confident in performing life-saving CPR to ultimately improve survival statistics. 

When Should You Perform CPR? 

You should do CPR only if someone is unconscious and not breathing, or not breathing properly. If someone is unconscious but breathing normally, call an emergency immediately. 

Sometimes you’ll find that the patient’s heart is beating, but they’re not breathing. This condition is called a respiratory arrest. Without CPR, it’ll become a cardiac arrest quickly. In case of a respiratory arrest, don’t waste time checking for a pulse. If someone is unresponsive and not breathing or not breathing properly, then call emergency and start CPR immediately.

How To Perform CPR? 

(Please note that performing CPR on an adult is different for a baby or child. This article’s scope is limited to CPR for adults only. )

Before performing CPR, you need to consider the safety of the environment, consciousness, and responsiveness of the person. 

If you find someone who’s unconscious, check for any hazards in the environment before proceeding. Shake them to check if they are able to respond to your call. If they are unresponsive and you find that they’ve stopped breathing or not breathing properly, then it’s time to call the emergency immediately. You can ask for an automated external defibrillator (AED), a sophisticated, and easy-to-use device for sudden cardiac arrest and help the heart re-establish an effective rhythm. Alternatively, you can keep a home automated external defibrillator in your first-aid kit. 

The American Heart Association recommends us to use the letters C-A-B as a ready reference to perform effective CPR. 

C: Compressions

Compressions are the most important step in the CPR technique. Below are the steps you can follow to complete this step. 

• Place the person on their back on a firm surface.
• Kneel next to them and place the heel or lower palm of your hand in the center of the person’s chest.
• Place your other hand on top of the first hand, interlocking your fingers.
• Keeping your elbows straight and shoulders directly above your hands, compress the chest at least 5 cm or 2 inches, but no more than 6 cm or 2.4 inches.
• Use your entire body weight, not just your arms, for doing compressions. 
• Push hard at a rate of 100-120 compressions per minute. The American Heart Association suggests performing compressions to the beat of the song “Stayin’ Alive.”

Please note that if you’re not trained in CPR, continue to do the chest compressions until there is some movement or the emergency medical team arrives and takes over the case. If you’re trained in CPR, you can follow the next steps.

A: Airway

If you’re trained in CPR and you’ve performed 30 chest compressions, you can open the person’s airway with the head-tilt, chin-lift technique. All you need to do is:

• Placing your palm on the person’s forehead, gently tilt your head back. 
• Then, with the other hand, slowly lift the chin forward to open the airway.

B: Breathing

Here are the steps you can follow.

• After you open the person’s airway, pinch their nostrils to close them for rescue breathing. 
• You can do mouth-to-mouth breathing by covering the person’s mouth with yours.
• You can also opt for mouth-to-nose breathing if the mouth is injured or can’t be opened. 
• Current recommendations post-COVID suggest doing rescue breathing using a bag-mask device with a HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filter.
• If the chest rises after the first breath, give a second rescue breath. But if the chest doesn’t rise, do the head-tilt, chin-lift technique and repeat with a second breath. 
• Be cautious not to give too many rescue breaths or exert lots of force.

Usually, 30 chest compressions and 2 rescue breaths are considered one cycle of CPR. Resume chest compressions to restore blood flow.

Continue CPR until there are signs of movement or regaining consciousness or a professional medical team comes to the rescue. 

Conclusion

Your hands can help save more lives. So, learn the basic skills of CPR as soon as possible to save people. 

If you’ve not yet thought of CPR to date, we highly urge you to educate yourself and consult your doctor regarding any queries on this technique. It’s always better to be prepared than not be prepared at all. Contact a primary care doctor in Campbell, CA for any queries about cardiac care, including the CPR technique. 

(Disclaimer: We routinely draw upon public health resources to inform our write-ups. Information in this article may be drawn up from multiple public health sources, including:

• Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
• Medline Plus
• National Institutes of Health 
• American Medical Association
• American Association of Family Physicians
• Mayo Clinic
• Family Doctor