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 Attempts to prevent “tongue swallowing” are a major barrier to
successful bystander resuscitation of people with cardiac arrest,
they warn.
In many cases of cardiac arrests in athletes in recent years,
teammates, coaches and fans have tried to clear the athlete’s throat
before starting resuscitation because they mistakenly believed there
was a danger of tongue swallowing. This practice “is a real
obstacle” to lifesaving CPR, researchers wrote in the journal Heart
Rhythm.
“There is a gap between what the medical community knows and
practices regarding CPR and what is common in society,” study
coauthor Dana Viskin of Tel Aviv University in Israel told Reuters
Health by email.
A cardiac arrest is not the same as a heart attack. In a heart
attack, an artery in the heart becomes blocked, and some of the
heart muscle begins to die because it is not getting enough oxygen.
In cardiac arrest, the heart can’t pump blood to the brain, lungs
and other organs. The person becomes unresponsive and either gasps
or doesn’t breathe at all.
Viskin and colleagues searched for videos online that showed cardiac
arrests during athletic events, including when the first team member
began to help, when medical aid arrived, and when and what type of
rescue maneuvers were used.
They found 29 videos from 1990 to 2017 that clearly showed the
rescue process. Overall, 15 players survived. The videos often
showed teammates attempting to “open the airway” to prevent tongue
swallowing or choking, sometimes shoving fingers in the throat or
pulling at the tongue vigorously to move it out of the way. The
researchers also found that media coverage related to the videos
sometimes mistakenly reported the importance of preventing
tongue-swallowing in these situations.
Many of the videos posted online had millions of views, which could
mean that many viewers are learning incorrect ways to address and
administer CPR in these situations, Viskin added.
By contrast, the “hands-only CPR demo video” by the American Heart
Association (http://bit.ly/2xxOBjH) and the “learn hands-only CPR”
video from the American Red Cross (http://bit.ly/2xykBUS) have far
fewer views.
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“Athletes are the tip of the iceberg, and what applies to them
represents the hundreds of thousands of people who have cardiac
arrests,” said Dr. Peter Kudenchuk of the University of Washington
School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington.
Kudenchuk, who wrote a commentary published with the study, told
Reuters Health by phone, “We pay attention when this strikes
athletes because they’re elite, young and healthy members of
society. But it occurs once every minute to someone in the U.S.,
often with the same scenario seen in these videos of athletes.”
Kudenchuk recommends the “No, No, GO!” technique, which first checks
whether the collapsed person is conscious and whether the person is
breathing normally. If the answer is “no” to both, then bystanders
are advised to immediately “GO!” with chest compressions.
“In our community, the emergency dispatcher sends out an emergency
response team but also instructs the person on the phone how to do
CPR,” Kudenchuk said. “This is the part where the rubber meets the
road to save someone.”
Viskin’s team would like to move forward with educational campaigns
through the American Heart Association and Red Cross to train the
general public about heart attack and CPR guidelines.
“Anyone anywhere can save somebody’s life,” Kudenchuk said. “Keep
your hands with you, and you can save lives.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2xxSOnC and http://bit.ly/2xynq8A Heart
Rhythm, online September 19, 2017.
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