CPR Update (yet another PSA from the management)

I remember back in my first year of high school I took an after-school CPR course offered by the local chapter of the Red Cross. 

It wasn't that I had ambitions of being an EMT or Paramedic or anything.  Rather, there was this gorgeous cheerleader whose locker was two down from mine.  She had the uncanny ability to make me light-headed just by walking past and leaving me in her intoxicating aroma of Noxema and Herbal Essence shampoo that always seemed to waft after her perfectness as she walked down the the hallway.  One day I overheard her telling one of her friends she was planning on taking this CPR course...

Take one adolescent boy and toss in the remote (like Antarctica-remote) possibility of a mouth-to-mouth or chest compression demonstration with a Senior Cheerleader/goddess (or more likely, simply prolonged close proximity and perhaps an exchanged word or two) and one begins to understand how I ended up taking this CPR course.

So much for altruism, right?

So a few weeks after this bit of eavesdropping I found myself in a classroom with about 15 other kids (including you-know-who) where a Red Cross instructor was unpacking a 'Resusci-Annie' doll that was just ghastly enough to banish any, and all, kissy/touchy-thoughts from my over-sexed teen-aged mind.

The CPR course ended up being surprisingly informative and well-run, and I think there was only one small moment of distraction where most of the boys in the room watched this cheerleader performing mouth-to-mouth on 'Resusci-Annie's'  cold-dead lips while silently wishing that G-d would bless us at that very instant with a mild coronary event so that she could practice on a more suitable subject.

Anyhoo...

The reason I've shared this rather embarrassing glimpse at my high school dorkiness with you is that Book of Joe, one of my primary go-to guys when it comes to demystifying medical news, has just dropped a bombshell  - and not the cheerleader sort - regarding CPR:

"In a nod to reality, the medical profession is finally taking a practical position on what CPR should entail when performed by bystanders without medical training, as is usually the case if it happens at all.

Long story short: Forget all the stuff they taught you about rescue breathing and focus on chest compressions — 80 to 100 a minute, forceful enough to depress the breastbone about two inches (ignore the sounds of ribs cracking — that's collateral damage and unavoidable sometimes) and so energy intensive that the average person can't do more than five minutes at a time and remain effective." [emphasis mine]

Did you catch that?  No more dilemma of whether to risk giving mouth-to-mouth to a bleeding stranger (or carrying around a key-chain disposable airway/shield as I have for over a decade), or trying to figure out what to do first if you find yourself alone with someone who seems destined for the old dirt-nap unless you intervene.

The money quote from the article at Book of Joe:

"...a study of more than 4,000 cases of cardiac arrest, the largest on the subject to date, found that patients were more likely to recover without brain damage if their rescuers had focused on chest compressions alone. Published in The Lancet, the study found that 22 percent of people who received chest compressions alone survived with good neurological function, compared with 10 percent who received combination CPR."

I don't know about you, but if Joe buys it (he's a practicing physician, after all), that's good enough for me.   

Oh, and for all you 15-year-old boys out there, the new rules leave alive the fantasy of, um, chest compressions... so there's still that (if you catch my drift). 

Go read the whole thing.