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.
 Lay Rescuer checks if the environment if safe to do resuscitation

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.

Lay Rescuer checks consciousness by tapping both shoulders, checking the pulse and breathing

Call for help

Appoint someone to call for an ambulance. Appoint someone to get the AED.

Lay Rescuer appoints one person to call an ambulance and another person 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.

Continuous CPR is very important and one of the factors to do High-Quality CPR.

After the ambulance is called and someone gets the AED, the lay Rescuer starts immediately with 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.
 Lay Rescuer uncovers the shirt, blouse or dress of the Cardiac Arrest victim

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.

Lay Rescuer is following the instructions given by the AED and presses the Shock button if instructed

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.

Lay rescuers take turns to do CPR. CPR van 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.

Lay Rescuers stopped CPR when the Ambulance Paramedics take over the emergency situation

*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.

 

See in this video How to help if someone has Cardiac Arrest

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