Save a Life: How to Help Someone With Cardiac Arrest?
You may ask yourself sometimes: How do I help a person who has Cardiac Arrest?
It is very important to know what steps to take to give somebody who has Sudden Cardiac Arrest a chance of survival.
Follow these steps and try to help to save a life.
Are the surroundings Safe?
First, see if you can approach the victim safely. If it is necessary, take the victim to a safer place.
Check consciousness of the victim
Shake gently both shoulders and ask clearly and loud: “Hey, Hey, are you okay?” Check the pulse and breathing of the victim. No pulse, not breathing and unconscious? The victim has a Cardiac Arrest.
Call for help
Appoint someone to call for an ambulance. Appoint someone to get the AED.
Start CPR
Start immediately with CPR by placing your hands in the center of the chest.
Compress 100-120 times per minute without giving rescue breaths, or if you are trained to give CPR with Rescue Breaths, follow 30 compressions and 2 times rescue breaths and maintain the 100-120 compressions per minute. Compress the chest 5 to 6 centimeter (2 to 2.4 inches) DEEP and allow complete chest recoil (the chest requires to move back in the original position). Do not interrupt the chest compressions for more than 10 seconds.
Compress 100-120 times per minute without giving rescue breaths, or if you are trained to give CPR with Rescue Breaths, follow 30 compressions and 2 times rescue breaths and maintain the 100-120 compressions per minute. Compress the chest 5 to 6 centimeter (2 to 2.4 inches) DEEP and allow complete chest recoil (the chest requires to move back in the original position). Do not interrupt the chest compressions for more than 10 seconds.
Continuous CPR is very important and one of the factors to do High-Quality CPR.
When the AED arrives
Uncover the clothes on the upper body of the victim (with women, also take off the bra), so that the SCA victim has a bare chest. Turn on AED and attach Electrode Pads to the victim’s bare chest.
Listen to the voice prompts of the AED
Follow the voice instructions of the AED accordingly. Give shock with the AED by pressing the shock-button, if the voice instructions tell you to do so.
Take turns with someone else doing CPR
When the victim does not revive back consciousness and the Ambulance Paramedics have not arrived yet, take turns with other people who are capable of doing CPR. CPR can be very exhausting.
When can you stop Resuscitation?
Continue to resuscitate the victim until the Ambulance Paramedics* arrive and take over the emergency or when the victim comes back to life.
*If your company or building does not have access to an ambulance, we recommend a subscription to LifeLine 16911 in our National Capital Region. The EMT Ambulance staff of Lifeline 16911 will assure you of good pre-hospital care after an incident of Cardiac Arrest. They are tied up with regional hospitals in the National Capital Region in the Philippines and will transport the victim there.
Thanks for helping me understand that CPR must be given immediately for about 100-120 times per minute of compression. I guess there are important technicalities and strategies to be applied when doing this to save a life. So it is important to undergo proper CPR classes before you try and help someone else to prevent making the situation worse.
ReplyThis is mind blowing way to explain step by step everything through images. Love it!
ReplyI like how you mentioned that you could give a chance of survival if you can perform CPR. My sister said the other day that she wants to pursue her career being a nurse, and she asked if I had any idea what would be the best option to find CPR and other basic cardiovascular life support skills. Thanks to this informative article, I’ll be sure to tell her that it will be much better if she consults a well-known safety training and certification service as they can guide her throughout the process.
ReplyIt helped when you wrote that the patient with cardiac arrest should be resuscitated continuously until the ambulance arrives. My friend wants to ensure that she won’t get into cardiac arrest. I should advise her to look for a cardiovascular lab service to schedule a regular checkup for a healthy heart.
ReplyI never took into account the fact that CPR is done by compressing 100 to 120 times per minute at first without giving rescue breaths or when you are trained to do it as well. I can see how important this kind of service would be when someone has had a cardiac arrest to save their life. With that in mind, I should encourage my family to get an America Heart Association CPR certification to be prepared for this situation until professionals have arrived. We have lots of elderly in our family as well, so it would be for their safety if ever the heat or stress causes them to have such issues in the future.
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