Providing CPR? Play this video and enshrine the beat in your soul as you read on:
For decades, those trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation — or CPR — have been told to follow the A-B-C method: Airway-Breaths-Compressions.
Why? Chest compressions are more important than opening the victim’s airway.
Hundreds of thousands of people each year in the United States suffer sudden cardiac arrest, which can happen to anyone at any time. Many victims appear healthy with no known heart disease or other risk factors.
Chest compressions are more urgent than tilting back the person’s head, pinching their nose and breathing into their mouth. The traditional A-B-C route delays lifesaving compressions by at least a precious 30 seconds, researchers found. The new recommendations say the manual chest pumping should start immediately on anyone who is unresponsive and not breathing normally.
“Effective bystander CPR, provided immediately after sudden cardiac arrest, can double or triple a victim’s chance of survival,” said a fact sheet on the new CPR and ECC (emergency cardiovascular care) guidelines, which were last revised in 2005.
Sudden cardiac arrest is not a heart attack, but occurs when the electrical impulses in the heart become rapid or chaotic — which causes the heart to suddenly stop beating, the fact sheet said. A heart attack, which occurs when the blood supply to a part of the heart is blocked, may cause cardiac arrest. U.S. emergency responders treat nearly 300,000 victims of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year. Fewer than 8 percent of those who suffer cardiac arrest away from the hospital survive to return home.
The new guidelines say that rescuers should also push deeper and a little faster than previously recommended.
Specifically, chest compressions should be at a rate of at least 100 compressions per minute — roughly the tempo of the thoroughly appropriate Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees.