Monday, June 3, 2013

CONTINUOUS CHEST COMPRESSIONS- AN EASIER CPR LIFESAVER

                                                   
ABOVE is a  video demonstration of the new, easier Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation called Continuous Chest Compressions (CCC) a new form of Cardiopulmonary Resucitation (CPR) that takes the complication out of the traditional CPR method used on ADULTS that was taught and practiced a few years ago.  

Please Watch. It's easy to remember and you don't have to be certified to use this method, and it may save a life! This is a great demonstration, done by the doctors who developed the procedure at the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center.  

I urge you to watch and then share it with those you care about. 

Remember all that stuff you had to do when performing the older traditional Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) on an adult who is unconscious due to cardiac arrest and is not breathing. Complicated, tiring, alternating 30 hard compressions on the chest, then two quick breaths into the mouth at the same time. Plus you had to get a certification for attending instruction classes to be able to perform CPR.

Forget about it!!! 

How many people know that there is now a much simpler, easy to remember, anyone can perform CPR method called Continuous Chest Compressions?

This new method, actually it has been endorsed since 2008 by the American Heart Association and other major medical organizations as the preferred CPR method-CLICK HERE-

For unresponsiveness in young children (age 8 or under), drowning cases, or drug overdoses, follow conventional CPR guidelines (30 chest compressions followed by two mouth-to-mouth ventilation's). This is because in infants or children, respiratory arrest is more common than primary cardiac arrest. However, even in these cases, Chest Compression Only CPR is better than doing nothing. To learn conventional CPR, a certification class is recommended.

Studies completed in the United States, England and Sweden tell us the new Continuous Chest Compression method is as effective as, or even more effective than traditional CPR.

Every 33 seconds someone dies of cardiovascular disease in America-Click here-which is roughly the equivalent of a September 11th World Trade Center tragedy repeating itself every 24 hours, 365 days a year.
  . 1.5 million heart attacks occur in the United States each year with 500,000 deaths.
  • More than 233,000 women die annually from cardiovascular disease.
Over 310,000 Americans die from cardiac arrest suffered each year away from hospitals and emergency rooms, and only six percent survive if stricken outside a hospital

The chance of surviving a cardiac arrest outside a hospital was found to be twice as high when bystanders performed continuous chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth breathing than when bystanders performed standard CPR.

These are  findings reported by the Resuscitation Research Group at the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center and the SHARE Program (Save Hearts in Arizona Research and Education) at the Arizona Department of Health Services

Only 5 percent of cardiac arrest victims survived if nobody performed CPR. In those receiving standard CPR (alternating between 30 compressions and 2 breaths), survival was marginally higher at 6 percent. In contrast, 11 percent survived if bystanders kept pumping on their chest and did not stop for mouth to mouth breaths until emergency medical services arrived.

These trends were even more pronounced in those patients facing the highest survival chance to begin with due to the specific nature of their cardiac arrest, namely those whose collapse was witnessed and whose heart was in a rhythm that is most likely to respond to a shock from a defibrillator. In those, the survival rate was 17 percent without bystander CPR, 19 percent with standard CPR and 32 percent with continuous chest compressions.

The analysis also showed that while the percentage of bystanders administering CPR increased only slightly over the past four years, of those that did choose to help, 77 percent opted for chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth breathing instead of standard CPR. Before, that number was only 16 percent.

The results of the analysis, which included 4,850 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Arizona that occurred from 2005 and 2009, was presented by Gordon A. Ewy, MD, director of the UA Sarver Heart Center at the "Best of the Best" abstract session of the American Heart Association's Resuscitation Symposium in Orlando, Fla.

"Over the course of three days, out of hospital cardiac arrest claims as many lives in the U.S. as the September 11 attacks," Dr. Ewy said. "This study is the first to show that bystanders can raise the odds of survival by giving continuous chest compressions rather than the type of CPR they are being taught in most certification classes. If we can get more people to act, more patients who were on the brink of death will be walking out of the hospital neurologically intact."

Anyone performing these procedures are protected by the Good Samaritan Laws-CLICK HERE.

Giving CCC is better than doing nothing and since it is so easy, bystanders are more willing to assist. If someone is dying, it is better to break a rib, or bruise the chest, than to do nothing!  Step up and be a lifesaver!