posted
...I'm a Basic Life Support and CPR instructor and have been teaching a technique called "Cough CPR" to students for about a year now. Whether you want to believe it or not, we are all candidates for a heart attack, some a lot more than others. This is a technique that can be used if you feel the symptoms of a heart attack coming on, especially if you’re on your own. The symptoms are:
*A heavy feeling in your chest like someone is tightening a belt around it (not necessarily a sharp or severe pain) *Numbness, tingling or pain in your arm radiating to your neck or leg *Profuse sweating *Nausea
You don’t have to have all of these, but it’s important to seek medical help immediately if you feel the onset of these symptoms as most people who did from a heart attack do so within 2 hours of the onset of symptoms.
Here is the information: Passed along from Dr. Joe, the Diabetes Doctor Georgetown University ICU. The two individuals that discovered this then did an article on it had it published and have even had it incorporated into ACLS and CPR classes. It does work. It is called cough CPR. A cardiologist says it's the truth.... For your info. If everyone who gets this sends it to 10 people, you can bet that we'll save at least one life. Read this...It could save your life! Let's say it's 6:15 p.m. and you're driving home (alone of course), after an unusually 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 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 did not 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 to be in order. Without help, the person whose heart is 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 felt 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.
From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240s newsletter AND THE BEAT GOES ON..." (reprint from The Mended Hearts, Inc. publication, Heart Response)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ E-News is written by Dr. Joe Prendergast and his staff at Endocrine Metabolic Medical Center. It is sent out Monday through Friday
-------------------- 'b0
1991 Formula SLP350 A4 2001 Mitsu Eclipse GT A4 2001 Chevy Blazer ZR2 4x4 2002 SOM Trans Am Firehawk M6 #360
...that's pretty interesting, especially since there was an article advocating it in today's paper and a doctor talking about it positively on the news today. The bottom line is one of the first signs of a heart attack is denial by the victim (unless you've had one before)...people will blame the discomfort on a muscle strain, gas, heartburn, and pretty much anything else, especially those who are younger or consider themselves to be physically fit. By the time a person approaches the onset of cardiac arrest, they're feeling pretty darn bad and at this point feeling that maybe they are indeed having a heart attack, and at that point in my mind I would try pretty much anything that might give me a chance to survive (I mean let's be serious here...how many people carry aspirins with them all the time). As I tell my students who express a fear of causing injury by performing CPR on someone improperly...if you're doing CPR on them in the first place, they are clinically dead at best...if you do nothing, they are going to be biologically dead soon, so anything that you do, whether it be full CPR, only chest compressions or only ventilations, and whether it be performed perfectly or not, you're giving them a chance, even though it might be slim. People are generally under a misconception that if you do CPR properly on a victim of cardiac or respiratory arrest they're going to pop back to life, shake your hand, and walk away. This rarely happens...all you are trying to do with CPR is to circulate oxygenated blood through the body to keep the brain viable and "alive" until advanced life support procedures can be started (external defibrillation and pushing drugs). If you can do that with CPR, you've done your job, and given that person probably a 20% chance of survival...
...and those odds are sure better than none... Posts: 2721 | From: Melbourne Beach Florida | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
I remember seeing that email a few years ago and I laughed when I saw it over the last couple days. I wondered what took the news people so long to report it. Anyway, I think that in '99 when it was first passed around, most people thought it was ridiculous, including many doctors. The Snopes website wrote up the information at the time, passing off the procedure as dangerous and saying "If you were a doctor and knew exactly what you were doing, it might help save your life."
Fast forward to now. After further review, doctors see the potential of it and just as Jimbo pointed out, most of us would probably do anything that would give us the chance to survive. So now the "doctor endorsed" procedure comes out in the news...yet Snopes still has their old info up. Also remember, Snopes never said that the info was false - it was that it was dangerous, yet if your're having a heart attack, you are in much greater danger than anything a cough can bring you.
[ 03. September 2003, 06:51 PM: Message edited by: mhayman ]
Posts: 942 | From: Santa Barbara and Ventura, CA | Registered: Feb 2000
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Background: I'm a 4th year medical student at UCLA, and I'm currently doing a rotation in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA. I've had quite a bit of cardiac training, including a number of discussions with Dr. Criley of Harbor-UCLA (he's the father of modern EMS, established the first organized EMS system, and is generally recognized as a big name in emergency cardiology/ACLS...some of you may remember the show Emergency! in the 1980's).
Anyway, this question was brought up a number of times. Basically what we were told is that this is absolute and utter BS. There would be only a VERY VERY limited time where you could theoretically do this (key word is theoretical), and that you probably would not efficient pump blood because your coughing (which is basically a Valsalva manuveour) would increase your intrathoracic pressure (which would theortically help pumping), but because of the increased pressure, would decrease blood return to the heart (if you don't have blood flowing back to the heart, then you also lose forward flow). Thus, you'd need perfect synchrony b/w forward flow and return. Keep in mind, that given that your heart isn't working properly while you are having a heart attack, and that you are using MORE oxygen while coughing, it is a risk.
Regardless, I understand the argument that, hey, it's better than nothing, especially since you're dead otherwise. That is true, but if you had a small heart attack, and you're heart's limping along, and then say you start coughing and increase your oxygen requirement, you could set yourself up for your heart totally coding.
Their current recommendation is that you should chew up an aspirin, call 911 immediately, and get transported to a hospital where they can begin definitive treatment. If you have nitroglycerin, use that. I definitely agree with jimb0, as most people having heart attacks, EVEN IF THEY HAVE ALREADY HAD THEM, deny that that's what they are having again and don't do anything. They take a tylenol, take a sleeping pill, use ice packs, whatever, but don't do the definitive treatment. And, the scary part is that taking an aspirin even if you weren't having a heart attack is not going to hurt you, but people are scared of it. We were discussing this exact phenomenon at the hospital today in fact.
Anyway, these are my thoughts based on my learning. I'll ask my current cardiology attending about his thought regarding this tomorrow see what he says.
NiravSS
Posts: 156 | From: Los Angeles, CA | Registered: Oct 2000
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