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Get With The Beat

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By PHILIP MORGAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 18, 2007

Tampa - Tampa - If you can sing "Another One Bites the Dust," you may prevent someone doing just that.

But considering the occasion — you'll be doing CPR to the beat — you may prefer belting out "Staying Alive." That works, too.

So says Charlotte Young, a basic care life support instructor who trains health professionals at St. Joseph's Hospital.

Set to the recommended 100 chest compressions per minute, the Queen and Bee Gees songs capture the spirit of the American Heart Association's campaign to teach cardiopulmonary resuscitation — CPR — to even more of the masses. It's among several changes that have taken place since CPR training was extended beyond health-care workers in the early 1970s.

Two years ago, the heart association recommended new guidelines on how often to pump. It now prescribes 30 chest compressions to every two mouth-to-mouth ventilations, or rescue breaths, as they're called. That's up from 15 compressions to every two breaths after studies showed that circulation increases with each chest pump and must be built back up again after the rescuer stops.

Health experts no longer advise rescuers to first check for a pulse. Instead, they should immediately start CPR on anyone who is unconscious and doesn't appear to be breathing.

Fortunately, the new guidelines happen to be easier to follow than ever before. They came at a time when medical authorities realized that a heart attack victim's survival chances double if a bystander starts CPR immediately.

To transform the multitudes of bystanders into rescuers, the association promotes a kit that allows people to learn CPR at home instead of having to go somewhere to take a course. In a little less than two years, more than 250,000 people have ordered the Friends Anytime CPR kit sold on the association's Web site, www.americanheart.org. The kits, which cost less than $30, come with a video and partial mannequin on which to practice.

Three to four people learn CPR from each kit, according to estimates, says Charles Sand, an emergency physician at St. Joseph's and a past president of the American Heart Association's Florida and Puerto Rico region. "That's almost a million that wouldn't have had CPR [training] without these kits," he says.

The practice mannequin helps rescuers learn how to properly tilt the head to give rescue breaths. The mannequin's lungs inflate, and it signals when the rescuer — with hands on the sternum, between the nipples — has compressed the chest to the proper depth, about one-third of the body's depth.

Courses in hospitals or offered by the Red Cross are a great way to learn CPR, Sand says, but the kits make it more convenient. He hopes they'll vastly boost CPR expertise among the lay population.

"Eighty percent of cardiac arrests occur in the home," Sand says. "Unfortunately, most homes don't have a health care provider in there."

Action by an immediate bystander not only prevents a lot of deaths, it also saves people from brain damage. The brain begins dying after 5 minutes without blood, Sand says, so it's vital that the victim receive CPR until someone can arrive with a defibrillator to shock the heart into action again.

The heart association recommends that rescuers perform the 30-to-2 CPR for five cycles over a two-minute period before stopping to check for signs of life: coughing, breathing, moving. If none is seen, continue CPR until help arrives.

It's an exhausting workout, so Sand and Young advise knowledgeable bystanders to work in teams, alternating every two to three minutes. Lone rescuers should keep doing CPR as long as they can, he says.

"If they're meant to come back, [CPR] is what's going to bring them back."

Reporter Philip Morgan can be reached at (813) 259-7609 or pmorgan@tampatrib.com.

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