Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation or CPR For Family and Friends

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation or CPR is needed when there is a foreign body airway obstruction and the person cannot talk or they are choking.

A heart attack happens when the heart blood vessels become blocked and the heart muscle starts to die. There is severe pain or pressure in the chest and light-headedness.

Ventricular fibrillation is when the heart pumps and the blood pressure does not circulate. An unresponsive person will die if a normal heart rhythm is not re-established.

A stroke is when part of the brain does not receive blood and oxygen. Strokes include severe headaches, blurred vision, and weakness.

The adult chain of survival depends upon early access to 911 services, early CPR, early defibrillation and early advanced care from paramedics.

If you see that the person's face drops or that they have trouble breathing then you should call 911 immediately.

First you should check for a response by opening the airway and look, listen and feel for normal breathing. Open the airway with a head tit chin lift and put your hand on the forehead and your fingers under the chin.

Hold the airway open and pinch the nose shut and give two slow breaths and look for a chest rise with each breath. Use a jaw thrust and lift the mouth open and forward and move the jaw down.

Make sure that you deliver one breath every five seconds. If there are still no signs of breathing then you take the heel of one hand and in between the nipples and over the breastbone and while keeping your arms straight and keeping the arms straight over your hand you will pump the chest at a rate of 100 times a minute and compress 1 ½ to 2 ½ inches of compression each time.

So the first thing that we do for CPR is check the person for unresponsiveness, then call 911 give two slow rescue breaths, look for a chest rise, check for signs of circulation, do 15 chest compressions, give two slow breaths because if you do it fast the air will go into their stomach, each breath should be two breaths and do two cycles of 15 compressions and two breaths, and then do four cycles of 15 compressions and 2 breaths.

Agonal respirations and the signs if circulation

Agonal respirations sound like gasping breaths but those breaths are not enough to sustain life.

Recovery position is when you place the victim on their side and continue to monitor the patient until advanced support arrives.
Look at the patient to see if the chest is rising or has any kind of movement. The chest rising and falling is called the signs of circulation.

An AED is a defibrillator. Early advanced care is given to the patient by doctors and nurses.

Heimlich Maneuver or abdominal thrusts is giving five upward thrusts into the abdomen. You have to ask are you choking? Can you speak?

If you would like to take a CPR class the Red Cross has many classes in your area and there are usually four students per instructor so you have lots of one on one hands on instruction time.

Now child CPR or the infant and child rescue program is different from the adults as a child will go into respiratory arrest but not cardiac arrest most of the time.

Some things to look out for are respiratory arrest, cardiac arrest, choking, foriegn body airway obstruction, the baby can't talk or cry and has blue lips or fingernails.
For a child you can prevent cardiac arrest with early CPR and early 911. Other things you need to watch out for are SIDS which is sudden infant death syndrome.

This happened in my family and my aunt was trying to take a picture of her grandchild and the camera could not work right and they couldn't take the picture of the new baby. Sure enough, the baby died of sudden infant death syndrome and my grandmother said that the baby was just an angel and that that was the reason that the baby could not be photographed.

I think they even had more than one camera and none of them worked and then after the family had visited the baby that day one week later the baby died and had to be buried. It was very sad.

To prevent a child's cardiac arrest you have to look out for SIDS, injuries and choking. Place your child on their back or their side to go to sleep and not on their stomach.

Children under age twelve must sit in the back car seat and wear seat belts. Children who ride bicycles must wear head gear and know the rules of the road. Parents should keep the poison control number next to their phone and put gates in certain areas of their home to prevent a young child from falls.

A good rule of thumb is that if it can fit inside the tube of a standard roll or toilet paper then the child cannot play with it.



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For infant CPR you should tap the baby's foot and shout for help. Now gently tilt the head and do a head tilt chin lift don't tilt too far because you may obstruct the airway. Look, listen and feel for breathing, give two slow breaths and form a seal over the baby's nose and mouth and make sure the chest rises and slowly give two breaths and check for a response.

If there is no response from the infant, use two fingers between the nipples and use two fingers to press the chest downward. For an infant for every five compressions give one rescue breath however, for an adult you would give 15 compressions to every two rescue breaths.

For the infant 5 compressions and one rescue breath. Phone 911 after one minute. With an infant you can do one minute of CPR and then call 911 but with an adult you would call 911 first and then do CPR.

The infant would get 20 cycles of compressions and breaths. Give the infant five back blows with the heel of the hand and then five chest thrusts and then five back blows and five chest thrusts.

Hold the baby down in a diagonal downward position on your arm and hold the head downward but support the head on the arm and at a rate of 100 compressions per minute give two rescue breaths and look for signs of circulation do 100 cycles of 5 compressions and one breath. Give five compressions to one breath for a child.

The recovery position for a child is to put the child on its side.

Heimlich maneuver for a child is to make a fist with one hand thumb side flat against the body and above the navel and below the breastbone and then give four quick upward thrusts. If the child becomes unresponsive then start CPR.