So sorry to hear what you have been through today. Good for you for doing the right thing, though! I, too, have given CPR and know how very difficult it is. In my case, it was to my 42 year old husband and I was not able to revive him either. In the last 2 years since it happened, I have beat myself up daily for it. I cannot get out of my head all of the “what ifs”. Reading this has helped me understand a little better, that the outcome probably wouldn’t have been much different if I had done things “better”. So, thank you everyone for that.
Have a better day and know that you are a great person who did the right thing.
Contrast it with someone who keeled over in a meeting where my SO works. Everyone just stood around and stared at him until the ambulance arrived. No resuscitation attempts at all. I know I’d rather work with you. (SO heard about it much later else he’d have been in there doing something.)
Yeah, my understanding of the change was that they realized that compressions alone would move enough air to do some good, and so the standards were changed in hopes of getting more people to train/do CPR. Most people don’t carry one of the little mouthpieces around and lots of folks had gotten all freaky about doing MtM bare.
In non-health care locations only about 27% of sudden cardiac arrest patients receive CPR from a bystander before the ambulance arrives. In the other 73% rest of the cases bystanders call for an ambulance but refuse to do CPR.
Around 23% of such patients survive long enough to reach the hospital but many of those die later from complications.
Only 7.6% of patients who experience sudden cardiac arrest outside of a health care setting survive to be discharged from the hospital. Many of them have neurological deficits.
There is active research involving the use of therapeutic hypothermia to improve patient survival and neurological outcome.
After reading Kalea’s thread, I bought a pair of masks – one for adults and one for infants. They’re in the car with my (well-appointed, I think) first-aid kit. I’m unlikely ever to be in a position to perform CPR, and with the new guidelines I won’t really need the CPR masks. But it’s better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them.
I downloaded the advertised app to my phone after seeing this, soon after it came out. It lets you practice (using the phone’s accelerometer to gauge what you’re doing) on a sofa cushion or something similar so that you can understand both the pace and depth you need to achieve, and IIRC encourages you to similarly hold the phone with app running like that if you really need to do CPR.
Hope you have a nice evening with your wife, madmonk. You did a good thing today, and I hope you’re able to process the experience with a minimum of negativity or trauma.
same thing happened to me a few years ago. call over the pa for anyone knowing cpr. i almost stepped on him racing up the hall. after a few compressions he started to breathe and heart beat started. we had oxygen in the office so we put the mask on. like you the fire station was right across the street.
then he slowed down breathing and we couldn’t get a pulse on his wrist, still had one on the neck, then the pulse stopped in his neck. another coworker came to help, more compressions, this time with breaths, then he started to come around again. by the time the emts arrived he was back on the oxygen and had a pulse.
it reminded me of an engine that was hard to start, you turn the key, and it catches then stops, you try again, catch stop. it seemed more like a rhythym thing than a blockage. the day was a bit surreal. all of us wondering how he was doing.
he did pull through, got a pacemaker and came back to work. he switched companies about 4-5 months later and a bit over a year later he passed away.
it does haunt you, did i do everything? was i fast enough? did i do it right? at least in my case, there were 3 of us working to help him. one monitoring pulse and 1 then 2 doing cpr.
i didn’t see him after he left the office, when i heard he passed, i was glad he had that extra bit of time.
About 20 years ago when I first had training in CPR and other first aid, not only was the compression/breaths ratio more weighted towards breaths, but there were also situations where we were told to just do breaths with no compressions at all (I’m not sure, but I think drowning might have been one of them). Earlier this summer, I got recertified, and as Ibanez says, CPR complete with compressions is now recommended for all unconsciousness. It seemed a lot simpler: I suspect part of the change is that they felt it was better for people to have a procedure they were comfortable enough to use, as opposed to not remembering how it goes and thus doing nothing at all. Another big difference is that the training now includes the use of an AED, which weren’t really available 20 years ago.
One other point, though: When giving CPR to children, it is still recommended that you start with two breaths, rather than going straight to the compressions. This was actually the emphasis for my most recent training, since it was for a job working with children.
I forgot to add, good on you for trying **madmonk28 **, and don’t doubt yourself for one second as far as “making his situation worse” goes. As already mentioned the poor man was likely deceased or on his way there when you started CPR. I’ve never had to perform CPR on a person, but I’m sure doubt is something most non EMS individuals have to deal with if they ever have to perform it. So don’t sweat that stuff.
Words from my first CPR instructor decades ago, that stuck with me. “While you’re doing compressions if you feel a snap or hear a crack, that’s the persons ribs breaking, don’t worry about it they’re deceased anyways.”
Don’t doubt yourself. Chances are that there wasn’t anything anyone could have done to save him, but you at least tried.
In my medical career, I have seen a few patients who had cardiac arrest in the hospital and immediate CPR - even then, most of them died. It’s worth trying because every now and then there is a miracle case where the person does well against all odds, but unfortunately by the time someone is in that condition the odds are very heavily stacked against them.
I’m really sorry your coworker didn’t make it Madmonk. Unfortunately, as anyone trained in CPR knows, it’s nearly always ineffective. But, there’s always a chance and he had that chance because of you.
I just passed my certification again (not recert but I have had it before and it has definitely changed a couple times since I was first certified).
It’s currently 30:2 for both single and multiple rescuers. Compressions should be given to the beat of Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees :p. With multiple rescuers, they should swap after every 5 sets of 30:2 (or 2 minutes). We were taught to check for pulse but only because it was an advanced class for future health care workers. However, our professor said that unless we were working in a health care setting and told by the employer to check for pulse, don’t waste time doing it.
Also popping in to say I’m really sorry your colleague didn’t make it.
It doesn’t matter which version of the protocols you used, or whether it was perfect CPR. You gave your colleague a fighting chance, and that’s the important bit.
Oh, honey. I’m so glad your wife is home tonight. I can’t imagine how much shittier that would be for me if my husband hadn’t been there when I got home.
Um, I was also recertified last year, and was told check for breathing- and if they’re not, start CPR, as there’s a fair few situations where someone can be unconscious but breathing fine on their own, and it’d be unnecessary and potentially dangerous to give CPR then.
Our professor said they don’t emphasize checking for a pulse because it can be very hard to detect and it wastes precious time trying to find one when you could be giving compressions.
I’ve read about this a bit as well. I believe it was in the context of physicians and every day joe’s and the lengths they wanted others to go to in order to save their lives.
Most every day Joe’s wanted as much intervention as possible, short of invasive treatment (and even then, the percentages were still pretty high). However, most physicians didn’t want ANY intervention at all, even less invasive types (such as CPR).
Turns out that if you need CPR your chances of not dying are under 10%. Not only that, but the majority of the people who don’t die end up with debilitating brain/organ damage.
Only a very small percentage of people actually make a full (full meaning that they can expect a reasonable return to a normal quality of life) recovery.
So the question arises: would YOU want to people to perform CPR on you, knowing full well that not only are you still likely to die, but should you survive, you are MUCH more likely to end up with brain damage so severe as to seriously affect your quality of life than to actually be fine?
