Forget CPR, Give CCR Instead

Link for entire article is at the end of the article:

Adults Who Collapse Need Chest Compression, Not Mouth-to-Mouth
By Daniel J. DeNoon WebMD Medical News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
March 11, 2008 -- For adults who collapse after cardiac arrest, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is dead.
A new lifesaving technique, cardio-cerebral resuscitation, is much more likely to save lives than the old cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR technique, an Arizona study shows.
It's a big change. Instead of using their mouths to give the "breath of life," rescuers should use their hands to keep blood moving to the hearts and brains of cardiac arrest victims, says Bentley J. Bobrow, MD, medical director of Arizona's emergency services system and an emergency physician at Mayo Clinic Hospital, Scottsdale....

...New Advice: Don't Stop Chest Compressions
The old CPR technique called for rescuers to give 30 chest compressions followed by two quick emergency breaths into the mouth of the victim, notes Mary Ann Peberdy, director of the resuscitation program at Virginia Commonwealth University.
"It takes about halfway through that chest-compression cycle to build up a marginal pressure to the heart and brain," Peberdy tells WebMD. "As soon as you stop, that pressure almost immediately falls to zero. After giving ventilation, it takes halfway though next cycle to get the pressure back up -- so you are constantly chasing your tail."...

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How to Do CCR for Cardiac Arrest
A cardiac arrest isn't the same as a heart attack.
"A heart attack is a plumbing problem, and a cardiac arrest is electrical," Peberdy says. "A heart attack is a block in a pipe, and unless the pipe unclogs the heart muscle will die. A cardiac arrest is a sudden catastrophic electrical problem where the heart cannot beat at all. Cardiac arrest equals sudden death. You die unless you are resuscitated."...

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