4 ms·

They did all that they could to save her from death, but in the author's opinion that's not what they should have been saving her from. As an example, they int

They did all that they could to save her from death, but in the author's opinion that's not what they should have been saving her from. As an example, they intentionally didn't save her from the agony of receiving CPR.

metildaa 8y ago
CPR is brutal, both for the person receiving it and the person providing it. You crack the person's ribs and end up mushifying their chest if you persist in doing CPR too long. The other thing is without an AED (a defibrillator) the success rate of CPR is quite low, one physician I know equated it to buying time for the brain, as he had never seen CPR alone bring someone back.
- licebmi__at__ 8y ago
  As far as I know (my wife is an emergency physician), despite what the name suggest, CPR is not really for "bringing back". Is a technique to keep the blood flowing so the brain doesn't suffer damage until other techniques are applied. Also, as she explained to me, the defibrillator is only used on certain kind of arrests, it can actually make things worse on others.
  - JshWright 8y ago
    CPR circulates blood to the oxygen and brain, keeping it going long enough for the heart to (maybe) be restarted. For the first few minutes after someone's heart stops beating, it probably hasn't actually stopped, it is just beating in a chaotic way that isn't actually moving any blood (this is known as "ventricular fibrillation, hence the "defibrillator"). The electrical discharge of the defibrillator is like someone standing up in a loud room and blowing an air horn. It shuts everyone up for a second, and hopefully the heart's normal "pacemaker" can take back over. There are some medications that can be given to "strengthen" that pacemaker, and to make the rest of the heart a bit less "twitchy" (and therefore less likely to go back into a lethal arrhythmia). There is a related arrhythmia known as ventricular tachycardia where the heart is beating too quickly to move any blood (and the beating is being triggered by random cells in the heart, not be the heart's intrinsic pacemaker). If someone is unresponsive and doesn't appear to be breathing, high quality CPR and early defibrillation are what will help them. If you have an AED, put it on them and follow the prompts it gives. And AED will not do anything that would make the patient's condition worse (to hurt someone with a defibrillator, you need to be using a manually controlled one).
    - JshWright 8y ago
      s/blood to the oxygen and brain/blood (and therefore oxygen) to the heart and brain/ That's what I get for late night commenting...
- JshWright 8y ago
  Obviously everyone is different, but I have never thought of CPR as "brutal" for the provider. Exhausting, certainly, but not brutal.
  - metildaa 8y ago
    For the provider, this was primarily a reference to the potential emotional rollercoaster of CPR (depending on how empathetic you are).
    - JshWright 8y ago
      That really hasn't been my experience. There certainly can be hard emotions surrounding the event (telling someone their loved one has died, etc), but CPR itself is pretty straightforward.
      - metildaa 8y ago
        Definitely, I agree that the physical act of CPR is straightforward.

metildaa 8y ago

CPR is brutal, both for the person receiving it and the person providing it. You crack the person's ribs and end up mushifying their chest if you persist in doing CPR too long. The other thing is without an AED (a defibrillator) the success rate of CPR is quite low, one physician I know equated it to buying time for the brain, as he had never seen CPR alone bring someone back.

licebmi__at__ 8y ago
As far as I know (my wife is an emergency physician), despite what the name suggest, CPR is not really for "bringing back". Is a technique to keep the blood flowing so the brain doesn't suffer damage until other techniques are applied. Also, as she explained to me, the defibrillator is only used on certain kind of arrests, it can actually make things worse on others.
- JshWright 8y ago
  CPR circulates blood to the oxygen and brain, keeping it going long enough for the heart to (maybe) be restarted. For the first few minutes after someone's heart stops beating, it probably hasn't actually stopped, it is just beating in a chaotic way that isn't actually moving any blood (this is known as "ventricular fibrillation, hence the "defibrillator"). The electrical discharge of the defibrillator is like someone standing up in a loud room and blowing an air horn. It shuts everyone up for a second, and hopefully the heart's normal "pacemaker" can take back over. There are some medications that can be given to "strengthen" that pacemaker, and to make the rest of the heart a bit less "twitchy" (and therefore less likely to go back into a lethal arrhythmia). There is a related arrhythmia known as ventricular tachycardia where the heart is beating too quickly to move any blood (and the beating is being triggered by random cells in the heart, not be the heart's intrinsic pacemaker). If someone is unresponsive and doesn't appear to be breathing, high quality CPR and early defibrillation are what will help them. If you have an AED, put it on them and follow the prompts it gives. And AED will not do anything that would make the patient's condition worse (to hurt someone with a defibrillator, you need to be using a manually controlled one).
  - JshWright 8y ago
    s/blood to the oxygen and brain/blood (and therefore oxygen) to the heart and brain/ That's what I get for late night commenting...
JshWright 8y ago
Obviously everyone is different, but I have never thought of CPR as "brutal" for the provider. Exhausting, certainly, but not brutal.
- metildaa 8y ago
  For the provider, this was primarily a reference to the potential emotional rollercoaster of CPR (depending on how empathetic you are).
  - JshWright 8y ago
    That really hasn't been my experience. There certainly can be hard emotions surrounding the event (telling someone their loved one has died, etc), but CPR itself is pretty straightforward.
    - metildaa 8y ago
      Definitely, I agree that the physical act of CPR is straightforward.