Originally Posted by
B. Carfree
Hear, hear.
The rather persuasive wife of my graduate adviser saved his life when she physically forced him into the ambulance at the first signs of heart trouble. An emergency quadruple by-pass later and he is a new man. Well, that and the fact that he now exercises and no longer smokes those horrid cigars. (By the way, his wife was also a biochemist who spent several decades working on synthetic blood for emergency surgeries.)
I took a Professional CPR class recently. (The class for medical professionals, as opposed the the regular class for lay persons.) Some interesting things from the instructor:
- A person in cardiac arrest has ~10 minutes during which he can be helped.
- The average ambulance call takes 8 minutes to arrive.
- The purpose of CPR is just to keep the blood moving until the ambulance arrives with a defibrillator, _not_ to resuscitate.*
- CPR on an adult _will_ break ribs.
(*) The instructor told us that on *one* occasion in his career, a guy actually did revive before they got a defibrillator on him...and it surprised the hell out of him.
BTW Contrary to what Hollywood may lead you to believe, the odds of CPR saving a cardiac arrest are not good.