Non Breathing Patient and CPR

When you initially approach someone, do the initial assessment, you are doing a breathing check. In this breathing check, you are opening the airway up and you are doing a breathing check for up to 10 seconds. When we cover the recovery position, this will be someone who is breathing. Now, in this example, we are doing a breathing check and we are finding out the person is not breathing. They have not got any effective breaths coming in and out of the mouth. you are not seeing the chest rise and fall, or the stomach rising and falling.

It may be that you do hear odd, gasping noises. Now, this happens in around about 40% of the time. This can be what's called Agonal breathing. This is a sign of death, not a sign of life, so you just need to make a decision. Is this person breathing, yes or no? So when we have done the breathing check, at that point, and you know this person is not breathing, you must activate the Emergency Services.

Dial 999, call for an Ambulance. We have a non-breathing male. Also, go to the reception and ask for the AED, and tell me what they said, please.

If you are on your own, this is where you are gonna need to leave the patient. I know you might think, "Oh, I must do CPR", but you've got to leave them. It's crucial we get the Emergency Services, with their AED, their defibrillator and all their drugs there as quick as possible. If there is someone else there, send them away to call the Emergency Services, get them to come back to you. And then send them out to actually meet the Emergency Services outside, so there's no time wasted.

What we are trying to do with CPR, is to push down on the chest. By pushing down on the chest, we are squeezing the heart. In squeezing the heart, we are forcing blood out of the heart, and then when we release the chest, it sucks blood back into the heart. So with every compression that we are doing, pushing down onto the chest, we are forcing blood around the body. Now, this is not as good as a heart beating normally, but it can be enough to keep the body's tissues and organs, with enough oxygen to keep them alive, so that when the Emergency Services get there, they can defibrillate the person, give them drugs and maybe bring them back.

CPR is not going to start the heart. If the person did show signs of life after, it might be that the heart never stopped in the first place. We must ensure that the Emergency Services get there. If there is an AED unit available, then we can use that. So when you are sending somebody else, or you are going for help yourself, it will be worth asking, "Is there an AED unit available?' If so, get it there. The AED units are very, very straightforward, they talk to you. So just with basic CPR training, you can open the unit up, it will tell you exactly what to do. It will tell you where to put the pads, with diagrams on the pads, and it will tell you when to touch the patient, when to do CPR and when not to touch the patient.

In most cases, in most martial arts areas, you probably haven't got a defibrillator there, but it is more important that why we must call those Emergency Services out.