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Plain old CPR by itself, with no ambulance on the way, is very unlikely to help. (That was another interesting tidbit - people almost never "wake up" while CPR
by danshapiro 14y ago
Plain old CPR by itself, with no ambulance on the way, is very unlikely to help. (That was another interesting tidbit - people almost never "wake up" while CPR is being administered).
Ambulance + plain old CPR, however, is much more effective than Ambulance + yelling "ITS GOING TO BE OK!" or playing Angry Birds or whatever. I don't remember the stats on effectiveness of performing CPR while waiting for the ambulance vs. not, but they were persuasive.
- Cushman 14y agoThis also means that if you are in, say, a wilderness survival situation where help is not coming, CPR will not save a life, but it is still recommended that you perform it-- the emotional impact of just watching somebody die will be dangerous to the survivors.
- vacri 14y agoA 2% chance of recovery is better than a 0.01% chance of recovery anyway.
- XorNot 14y agoMy parents are GPs. They somewhat recently had an old man have a heartattack in their waiting room, and basically had to give him CPR + rescue breaths (via one of those squeeze bottle ventilators) for about 10 minutes before the ambulance arrived. The hell of it was, it did work. The guy kept waking up from it while they were doing it, being very grumpy that people were pressing on his chest, and the moment they stopped he'd go unconscious again. Continued through the normal CPR and the ambulance's CPR apparently. Unfortunately in the end he didn't make it (heart just would not restart fully).