Page 74 - South Mississippi Living - June, 2016

take this to heart
Kickstart My
Heart
Learn how to save lives during National CPR Week
story by Lynn Lofton photos by Katherine Sowers
No one likes to think they’ll need to save another person’s life, but it can happen any time, anywhere, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation may be the method used. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, commonly known as
CPR, is an emergency procedure that combines chest compression in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who is in cardiac arrest, a leading cause of death in the U.S. Each year, more than 350,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur.
The first week of June is National CPR Week with
a focus on training and education. “When a person
has cardiac arrest, survival depends on immediately getting CPR from someone nearby,” says Gregory Doyle, operations manager with American Medical Response (AMR). “Almost 90 percent of people who suffer out-of-
hospital cardiac arrests die. CPR, especially if performed in the first few minutes of cardiac arrest, can double or triple a person’s chance of survival.”
Working with the American Heart Association, AMR is putting an emphasis on education to help save lives. In a training session lasting approximately one hour, instructors can teach anyone from junior high age and up how to apply hands-only CPR.
“There is no more mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” said Bobby Len Marshall, AMR’s clinical and education services manager. “With CPR we make the heart beat with our hands. It’s compression only and buys time. Compression is applied by interlocking the fingers of the two hands and pressing down with the heel of the bottom hand against the chest. You should mash deep and come back up the same distance.”
Marshall and Doyle stress the two important things that should be done immediately in an emergency situation: one — call or have someone else call 911,
74 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • June 2016
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