Heart beat
Hands-only CPR
If you see someone collapse and stop breathing, call 911 and then start pushing hard and fast on the middle of the person's chest, even if you've never been trained to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Don't stop to give mouth-to-mouth breaths unless you want to and know what you are doing. That's the latest advice from the American Heart Association, in an update of its 2005 guidelines on CPR (Circulation, April 22, 2008).
Receiving bystander CPR more than doubles an individual's chances of surviving a cardiac arrest. Yet the majority of folks who collapse in front of other people never get that help. Some bystanders hold off because they worry they won't do CPR right; others fear having to do mouth-to-mouth breathing. In an effort to get more people to do CPR, the heart association is giving the green light to hands-only CPR.
The change makes sense. For people stricken by a cardiac arrest, compressing the chest is just as good as alternating chest compressions with mouth-to-mouth breathing. That's because their blood is generally full of oxygen.
The compression-only approach works only for people suffering a cardiac arrest. If someone stops breathing because he or she has been under water, choked on food, or had a severe asthma attack, they need mouth-to-mouth breathing as well as chest compressions.
If someone suddenly collapses and stops breathing, odds are he or she is having a cardiac arrest. Here's how you can help:
Call 911, or have someone else do it. Send someone to find a defibrillator. Place both of your hands, one on top of the other, over the middle of the person's chest. Press hard and release. Repeat, aiming for 100 presses a minute. Don't stop if the person seems to gasp or move. Keep pressing until an emergency team arrives or someone comes with a defibrillator. If other people are with you, try to trade off every couple of minutes so you don't get tired and give weak compressions.
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