I magine a loved one around you suddenly has a cardiac arrest and you do not even know the basics of CPR. CPR is performed because once a person’s heart stops functioning, you need an external force to keep the blood flowing so that other essential organs do not die out. According to experts, CPR can triple the chances of a person surviving. In this article, we will give you a step-by-step procedure on how to carry out CPR on a person who has gone into cardiac arrest.
If you see a person who has apparently stopped functioning, it is always important to first confirm if they are not responding. Try to signal their attention and ask them “Are you alright?” and if there is no response, immediately call emergency services. It is significant to consider that you need a person monitoring the patient constantly, so it is better to ask a bystander to call for emergency paramedics. Time is of the essence here, and CPR needs to be performed immediately. If you are in a public building or an office, ask for an AED machine, which is used to provide shocks to a heart to get it to function. This might come in handy, if the patient is not responding positively to CPR.
Before you perform CPR, there are some more essential check-ups you need to perform on the patient. Lay them on their back and open up their mouths to allow the flow of air. Check if there are any obstructions such as food or vomit that is blocking their air passages and if there is, clear it up immediately.
Then check for signs of breathing. If they are not breathing for 10 seconds, or you just hear occasional gasps, perform CPR immediately. Please keep in mind that if the person is breathing but is unconscious, you should not perform CPR on them. Just lay them in a recovery position, and hopefully they will be fine on their own or just wait for emergency services.
If all signs are showing towards a cardiac arrest, start performing CPR. Place a hand on top of the other and hold them two together. Then place your hands on the center of the chest and start pushing down hard and fast. You should push down for 2 inches (ca. 5 cm) and the speed of the pumps should be 100 times per minute at least.
Keep in mind that the procedure is very different if the person is not an adult. On a child, place only a hand on their chest and for an infant place only two fingers and push down only 1.5 inches (ca. 4 cm). The bodies of infants and children are very fragile and using the same procedure as you do on adults can cause serious harm.
Then, lift the chin of the patient and push their head back slightly. Place the mouth completely over their mouth and pump air into their lungs. If this is the first time you do it, check if their chest is rising. If their chest is not rising, push their head back even more and repeat the process. If their chest still doesn’t rise, there is a chance they might be choking.
CPR requires you to constantly repeat the process of 30 compressions with two rescue breaths constantly. You can do this to the beat of some popular songs like “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. Do this task until emergency services arrive or when an AED machine is set up so that you can begin giving electric shocks to the patient.
Only perform CPR when you suspect that the patient is not breathing at all. In the case of children and infants, CPR is performed when you believe they are not breathing as normally as they should.
Circumstances that may require CPR may include:
As you can see, based on the information presented to you, CPR is an essential procedure that can be lifesaving. If possible, please attend a CPR training course from a qualified professional. You learn better and it becomes a muscle memory because at the moment of an incident, your brain might freeze and not remember the details. However, if you just need to know the basics of CPR, we just provided them to you, and we hope they prove to be useful to you.
