Three times in the past 6 weeks or so I’ve received this email:
Subject: HEART ATTACK
A dear friend of mine sent me this article on what to do and how you can help yourself or someone else in case of a heart attack.
I have taken CPR about 10 times over the last 35 years, but I never got instruction on what to do if I was alone and had a heart attack. Please read this and pass it on. It may save a life. I didn’t know this, did you?
Let’s say it’s 6:15p.m. and you’re driving home (alone of course) after and usually hard day on the job. You’re really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the nearest hospital nearest your home, unfortunately you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far. What can you do?
You’ve been trained in CPR but the guy that taught the course neglected to tell you how to perform it on yourself HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE. Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, this article seemed in order. Without help, the person who heart stops beating properly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is to be beating normally again. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital. Tell as many other it could save their lives! From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240’s newsletter AND THE BEAT GOES ON…(reprint form the Mended Hearts, Inc. publication, Heart Response)
BE A FRIEND AND PLEASE SEND THIS ARTICLE TO AS MANY FRIENDS AND FAMILY AS POSSIBLE
It has what appears to be useful information, but it’s glurged-up with the classic signs of internet urban legend - - FOAF, send to as many people as possible, save a life, etc. So, Cecil, what gives? Is this true, or if I follow this advice will I just be coughing while my heart attack kills me?
Here’s what they have to say.
[yosemite sam voice]Rackin’ frackin’ smackin’ trackin’ Snopes.[/ys voice] My friend you say? For some reason their web page wouldn’t load on my browser earlier this morning. Now my “friend” us up and saying nee-ner nee-ner nee-ner in 6 colors across all 17" of my monitor.
Thanks, RoboDude
Its a crock of shit.
I teach First Aid for Red Cross when I am not being a paramedic. While, like you, I have seen this bit of “advice” a couple of times previously, I have not seen one bit of discussion or interest in professional literature to support this notion, let alone any endorsement of it.
Whoever dreamt this up appears to equating a heart attack with cardiac arrest, when they are actually two distinctly different things. Most heart attacks do not lead rapidly and quickly to cardiac arrest, and many cardiac arrests are not associated with a preceeding heart attack.
The aim of external cardiac compressions in CPR is to provide alternating compression/decompression of the entire chest cavity, in order to shift blood through the heart and along major vessels. It was originally thought that CPR was only squeeing the heart but research has shown that we also squeeze low pressure vessels like the vena cavae, which adds considerably to the end result. Couching alone will not create enough intrathoracic pressure to achieve any of this.
The only time that coughing may have a role in cardiac care is when vagal stimulation is being induced to overcome an abnormally fast heart rate. The last thing we want to do in a heart attack is to apply inhibitory mechanisms, precisely because the risk of arrest is very real.
Finally: the reality is that most heart attack victims usually get plenty of warning signs of impending crisis. The best thing to do is to call an ambulance early so that the care can start sooner. In the vent of an arrest, the prime factors in survival are the proxomity of a defribrillator to aplly a shock if needed, good airway management and oxygenation, high quality CPR and early application of emergency drugs such as adrenaline and atropine.
The most appropriate message to send to friends and family is that in a heart atack, time is muscle. If you waste more time getting help, more heart muscle dies.
Yo, Ivorybill, no sweat. 
Just teach yourself what I’ve been teaching my kids, now that they’re old enough to have their own e-mail accounts:
So, before you forward that e-mail about the missing Afghan boyfriend and the Halloween mall attack to all your little friends, ask Mommy. Mommy will look it up on Snopes for you. 
(and Snopes is frequently cranky about loading for me, too. I know they’re there, so I just come back in a few minutes.)
Mmmm-kay. Now my monitor that so recently had Snopes going nee-ner on it is now coated with coffee. Thanks, DDG.
Guess Mommy’s so busy checking Snopes for her real life kids that she can’t bring me a bottle of windex and a paper towel…
Hey! put that down! I’ll tell Manny!
(and I thought the Afgan boy wanted us to sign a petition on the backs of business cards to fill his make-a-wish dream to get a dollar from Bill Gates for beta-testing the new spam-free Hotmail. Guess I need to get out more…)