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Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitate-Safety Tips Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitate
Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation = Reviving the Heart and Lungs
Cardio = HEART
Pulmonary = LUNGS
Resuscitate = REVIVE
Cardio = HEART
Our heart is a big, strong muscle that expands and contracts more than 60 times a minute without we even thinking about it. It is automatically driven by electrical impulses and runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no vacation time. That's around 33 million beats a year. Our heart has a simple, but important job. It pumps oxygen-rich blood from the lungs out to the rest of our body. If our heart stops pumping, oxygen does not reach vital organs and they stop working. That's when we get in trouble.
Pulmonary = LUNGS
We breathe about 15 to 25 times each minute and every breath we take brings oxygen into our lungs and gets rid of carbon dioxide. Our lungs function automatically just like your heart - we don't have to think about breathing, it just happens. Oxygen is important to our body because it gets combined with sugar to burn as fuel. There is very little oxygen stored in our body's tissues so it needs to be replenished often. (There is a big supply of sugar so we can go a long time without eating.)
If our body stops bringing air with oxygen in it into our lungs or our heart stops circulating the oxygen-rich blood to our organs, then bad things start to happen real fast. When the oxygen runs out, the body only has a few minutes in an anaerobic state before cells start to die and brain damage results. Typically, cells last 4 to 6 minutes before they begin to die and, after 10 minutes, the body is unrevivable.
Causes:
Some things that might prevent oxygen from reaching the cells of our body:
· Choking - Something blocks the path for air to reach the lungs.
· Poisoning - Some other gas takes the place of oxygen, such as carbon monoxide.
· Drowning or suffocation - There is no air available to breathe in.
· Electric shock - An electric impulse disrupts the normal heart pattern and causes it to stop.
· Heart attack - The heart stops beating. Oxygen is available in the blood in the lungs, but the heart is not moving it around.
· Ventricular Fibrillation (VF) - The heart gets out of synch and quivers instead of pumps, causing cardiac arrest. This is the most common cause of sudden cardiac arrest and is what Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) are for.
Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)
The letters in CPR stand for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a combination of rescue breathing (mouth-to-mouth resuscitation) and chest compressions. If a person isn't breathing or circulating blood adequately, CPR can restore circulation of oxygen-rich blood to the brain. Without oxygen, permanent brain damage or death can occur in less than 8 minutes.
CPR may be necessary for people during many different emergencies, including accidents, near-drowning, suffocation, poisoning, smoke inhalation, electrocution injuries, and suspected sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
CPR is made up of two parts: Rescue Breathing and Chest Compressions
Rescue Breathing
We exhale air from our lungs into the victim's lungs so they can absorb oxygen. This assumes that there is adequate oxygen in our exhaled air. Air contains approximately 20% oxygen at sea level, 16% at 5000 feet elevation, and 13% at 10000 feet. When we breathe in air, our lungs absorb about 25% of whatever is available. So, at sea level, we exhale air with about 15% oxygen which is more than exists at 5000 feet and is adequate. When we breathe into a victim's mouth and have their nose closed, the air is forced into their lungs and we can see the chest rise. We have successfully gotten some amount of oxygen into the system.
Chest Compressions
We manually compress the heart by pressing down on the chest. When we let up on the chest, the heart expands. The hope is that by compressing and expanding the heart, the blood flows through it as designed. Unfortunately, we don't have an easy way to tell if blood is flowing. We can't feel for a pulse or see results. We just need to keep believing in our efforts.
CPR Effectiveness
When properly performed, CPR simulates from 20 to 40% of normal circulation. That is not enough to sustain life indefinitely, but will be sufficient to put off the start of cell death in the hope that revival tools arrive soon. We should not expect CPR to restart a heart and have the victim pop back to life like is shown on TV. Our job is to keep oxygenated blood flowing until life support services arrive.
Remember, our goal of administering CPR is to buy a little time for an emergency rescue team to arrive and revive.
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