How can you help someone with a heart attack? Sing… Bee Gees under your breath

Proven content

If every person witnessing someone’s heart attack or simply cardiac arrest provided effective help, the profit would be enormous. As Dr. Matt Morgan writes in his book “The Critical State”, this would save thousands of human lives. When an experienced attorney died lifeless in a courtroom, his chances of a happy ending were virtually nonexistent. However, the cleaning lady rushed to help the man.

1. The judge’s heart stopped. Had it not been for the CPR that the cleaning lady performed on him, it would not have lasted until the arrival of the ambulance
2. Dr. Matt Morgan in his book shares this story with readers, but also a very simple way to do effective resuscitation that can save someone’s life. It has to do with the catchy hit from the 70s.
3. Below we publish a book excerpt from which you can learn how to save a man whose heart has stopped beating
4. More current information can be found on the Onet homepage.

The judge was presiding over the hearing when his heart stopped

At five feet tall, with a neatly trimmed beard, and a deep, deliberate voice, the Judge appeared to be a formidable man, both in size and character. He worked as a criminal lawyer for twenty years, then became a district judge and held this position for almost eighteen years, so I can say without exaggeration that he has seen everything in his field. He was known for his logical discernment in matters assigned to him, he hated fools, but he was fair to everyone. If he felt irritated or temporarily lost his temper, he would always try to sincerely apologize to those he might have offended by his behavior. When I first met the Judge, he no longer had most of the traits I described above. The reason was simple: he was dead. (…)

His story began on Tuesday morning as he presided over the compensation hearing. As those gathered in the room listened attentively, he suddenly felt something was wrong. As he stood up, he felt dizzy, and the blood circulating in his body couldn’t reach his brain. He began to fall to the ground, cells in his body sounding the alarm from the lack of oxygen before he hit his head on the oak carpet of the courtroom floor. Seeing that the Judge was not breathing, the janitor quickly ran up to him, placed her little hands on his chest and began to press rhythmically over and over again. If you had listened to the video of the eight minutes the Judge was dying, you would hear the caring tone of a Welsh janitor trying to connect with him and doing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) at the same time. It was the first time in her life that she had called him by name.

When the emergency services arrived, the Judge was still effectively resuscitated. A monitoring device, attached to his skin by the ambulance crew, sensed the electrical signals generated by his heart, but with a very irregular rhythm that did not keep his heart working properly. The electrical footprint of a healthy heart should look like a typical Welsh valley landscape: a small hill, followed by a tall large mountain, followed by a valley and another hill. Instead, the monitor screen showed an irregular pattern known as ventricular fibrillation, which prevented the heart muscle from contracting effectively and efficiently. As a result, not a single drop of blood could escape from the Judge’s heart. If someone does not fix it quickly, his life will be lost forever.

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Although the amazing devices and intricate drugs gave the Judge a chance to return to his courtroom, one condition was met: he had to come to the hospital alive first. It sounds simple, but it’s a key factor in the so-called chain of survival. Every year, 30 thousand people in the UK suddenly collapses to the ground after cardiac arrest. It will stop beating completely, begin to flicker (tremble) 200 times per minute – as in the Judge’s case – or it will not be able to pump blood out even though the electrical circuits are working properly. Out of 100 people who have cardiac arrest, about 20 will live long enough to reach the hospital. Of these 20, only two will eventually return to a relatively normal life. (…)

Have you been resuscitated or were you able to successfully resuscitate? Share your story with us. Write on: [email protected]

CPR: It’s not like in medical series

While chest compressions are often emphasized in medical series as a major component of CPR, this is only one component of the technique. As its full name suggests, CPR is all about lung and heart support. When dealing with a cardiac arrest patient in the ward, after confirming the absence of a carotid pulse, I focus on three elements of CPR: A, B, and C.

«A» relates to the patient’s respiratory tract. airwaysIt is about letting air flow freely into the lungs, where it turns into breath. Often this step is associated with intubation, which is the insertion of a plastic tube through the vocal cords into the trachea. (…) The insertion of an endotracheal tube allows not only to bypass all possible obstacles, but also, importantly, to pump oxygen-rich air into the patient’s lungs from an inflatable bag. (…)

«B» (the. breathing) is about artificial respiration, i.e. the delivery of oxygen to the lungs. (…)

“C” in CPR is oppression. compression, circulation). I have done them countless times, choosing a place in the center of the sternum, where pressure 100 times a minute allows the natural elasticity of the chest to literally push blood in and out of the heart. This activity is tiring both physically and emotionally: I will never forget to perform prolonged CPR on a XNUMX-year-old child, held by the hand and stroked by the mother all the time. Chest compression at a point limited in the front by the sternum and through the spine at the back pushes blood out, and the increased pleural pressure compared to the pressure outside the lungs literally pulls blood out of the heart. (…)

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How to save a life yourself? Sing… Bee Gees under your breath

If CPR were performed by an outsider for every cardiac arrest, we would save thousands of lives every day. In other words, if you do CPR the next time someone in front of you has a cardiac arrest, your chances of survival are doubled. That is why I would like to teach you this now. Best of all, it’s easy.

Place the lower part of the hand in the center of the patient’s chest, right between the nipples. Then place your other hand on it and start humming under your breath. Rhythmically compress the chest at the beginning of each word of the refrain of the ’70s classic Bee Gees:

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin ‘alive

Congratulations, you just performed CPR in the correct position and with the correct pace of compressions. You will become even better with a free CPR course. If you ever see someone around you fall over, not breathing properly, and not showing the normal signs of life, now you know how to start saving them. Make sure emergency services are alerted, get on your knees and just repeat our lesson today. Keep your arms straight and press firmly until your chest is sagging. You almost certainly won’t hurt the sick person this way, and you can save his life. There are risks involved in performing CPR, but failure to do so has one consequence: the death of the other person.

Initiating CPR early in cardiac arrest is critical to its success. Even the fastest ambulance will not be able to reach the patient sooner than the person standing next to it. It is always a good idea to undertake CPR, so I encourage everyone to train themselves in this area and use these skills whenever needed. If, thanks to the above few paragraphs, you ever save someone’s life, be sure to write me about it. This will be the best news in my life for me.

We have learned that early initiation of CPR is critical to patient survival. It was similar with the repair of the abnormal graph of the electrical activity of the Judge’s heart. Knowing this, the rescuers quickly sent an electrical impulse of 1000 volts through his skin, ending the chaos raging in his chest. CPR temporarily replaced the pumping function, but it was defibrillation that reset the electrical fault and allowed the heart to resume operating on its own.

The familiar mountainous horizon graph returned to the Judge’s heart-monitoring device. Blood was pumped again thanks to the team effort of the ventricles and atria working in the correct sequence. Life was back on track, but due to the time it took for the brain to run out of oxygen, the Judge was hooked up to a life support machine. All this happened in front of the astonished journalists and the accused, in the same courtroom where he had recently handed down his sentences. My task was to find out what had caused the temporary death of the Judge.

Also read: Can you cope with emergencies? A quiz that can save your life

Why does the heart stop?

When dealing with a patient who has had cardiac arrest, I ask myself three questions. What caused it? Can we fix it? How can we protect the brain? There are many conditions that can lead to cardiac arrest, although the most common cause is one of the three main organs: the heart, lungs or brain (usually the first). Contrary to what we see in TV series, when the protagonist grasps his chest and grimaces in pain, heart disease most often manifests itself simply as sudden death.

A heart attack happens when one of the three vessels that supply it with blood – the coronary arteries – becomes blocked. Such an obstruction consists of a mixture of clotted blood, fat, and hardened scar tissue from the vessel walls, which has weakened over time and finally ruptured. When an embolism occurs, blood stops flowing to the area of ​​the heart muscle that is supplied by the artery. As a result, this part stops contracting and can interfere with electrical signals as they travel to the rest of the heart.

Cardiac arrest can also occur without a sudden blockage of a blood vessel. The scar tissue formed as a result of a chronic disease can cause sudden electrical short circuits leading to arrhythmias, such as the Judge’s ventricular fibrillation.

Lung disease can also contribute to heart problems if the amount of oxygen carried from the air to the bloodstream is too low to fully supply the organs. This can happen, for example, when an embolism (a large blood clot) is preventing the blood from flowing normally through the lungs. Finally, a host of brain complications, such as hemorrhage and stroke, can also wreak havoc on the heart enough to cause it to stop working properly. Pressure on the brainstem from bleeding, or a lack of oxygen from a stroke, can significantly slow down the heart rate. The brainstem is also the body’s “control center” that regulates many basic functions, including temperature, blood pressure and even the amount of urine produced. Damage to the areas in its vicinity can quickly lead to serious physiological disturbances resulting in cardiac arrest.

After that, when I met with the Judge’s relatives in the hospital waiting room, I had a lot to say to them. It was a busy night, both for us and for him. I told them that my heart had stopped beating, but thanks to the janitor’s quick response, he made it to the hospital alive. We examined it for the most common causes of heart attacks. The brain scan showed no hemorrhage or stroke. We found no blood clots in the chest, although several ribs were broken during CPR (which, by the way, showed us that the resuscitation was done with enough force to move the blood all the way to the brain).

Then we took the judge to the cardiology lab, where a spaghetti-thick plastic tube was inserted into his body through a radial artery in his left arm. X-rays guided it all the way to the coronary arteries that supplied blood to his heart. This allowed us to check that there was nothing there to block them. He didn’t have a heart attack. What we did see was a progressive narrowing of the arteries, possibly due to a combination of age, inadequate diet, and high blood pressure. It could not be removed with a balloon or metal stent typically used to dilate vessels blocked during infarction. Putting together all this information, we concluded that the accumulation of minor damage from years of weaker blood supply to the heart caused fibrosis (scarring) in the conductive system of the Judge’s heart, eventually causing it to stop.

The fragment comes from the book «The Critical State. Stories from the border of human life »dr. Matt Morgan (Publisher Insignis Media).

We encourage you to listen to the latest episode of the RESET podcast. This time we devote it to the problems of the perineum – a part of the body just like any other. And although it concerns all of us, it is still a taboo subject that we are often ashamed to talk about. What do hormonal changes and natural births change? How not to harm the pelvic floor muscles and how to care for them? How do we talk about perineal problems with our daughters? About this and many other aspects of the problem in a new episode of the podcast.

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