0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
OMAHA, Neb. -- Lucy was drowning.The 10-month-old English bulldog had been drawn into the lake by resident ducks and Canada geese, and the icy water was paralyzing her.When owner Randy Gurchin edged onto the ice and pulled Lucy from the water, she was unresponsive. Her face and paws were blue. So he did what he had been trained by the Air Force to do: mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.He closed her mouth, put his mouth over her nose, breathed air into her nostrils and down into her lungs and pushed on her chest.Lucy began shallow breaths on her own after about a minute, he said.
Drop 'kiss of life', urge medics Advising first-aiders to give the "kiss of life" is off-putting and unnecessary, say medics. Not only are bystanders less likely to help someone who has collapsed if they have to do mouth-to-mouth ventilation, many are unable to perform it properly. Chest compressions alone are just as good if not better in most cases, a Japanese study in The Lancet shows. They recommend resuscitation trainers revise their advice. But the British Heart Foundation disagrees. The current advice is to give mouth-to-mouth ventilation unless you are unable, or are unwilling. 'Yuk' factor Studies show less than a third of people who collapse in public are helped by a bystander. Surveys reveal many would-be first-aiders are put off by the idea of giving the kiss of life - for fear of catching an infectious disease, for example. And when bystanders do assist, giving mouth-to-mouth can steal time from giving essential chest compressions. Furthermore, if the patient has collapsed because of a heart rather than a lung problem they should already have enough oxygen in their body to keep them going without needing rescue breaths from a bystander. Dr Ken Nagao and colleagues at the Surugadai Nihon University Hospital in Tokyo say in these circumstances it would be better for all parties to stick to giving chest compressions alone, which they called cardiac-only resuscitation. Chest compressions 'key They checked their theory by looking at the outcomes of more than 4,000 adult patients who had been helped by bystanders. They found chest-compression-only resuscitation was the clear winner compared with conventional CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or mouth-to-mouth breathing together with chest compressions).