BehindTheMedspeak: CPR — How to save a life without knowing a thing about it

BehindTheMedspeak: CPR — How to save a life without knowing a thing

Yes, it's a wonderful thing to know and use CPR in an emergency such that an individual who might have otherwise died survives intact.

But let's face it: few people know what to do and even fewer do it when push  — on the chest, hard, 60 times a minute — comes to shove.

So here's bookofjoe's tip that might well let you — uninformed, unschooled, and scared — help someone live.

1. Bend down 

2. Pick up their feet 

3. Hold their legs in the air, waist-high

That's it.

By doing this you increase blood return to the central circulation — the heart, which needs to fill in order to pump blood and recover spontaneous heartbeat — from the periphery, where it's irrelevant to survival in a circulatory crisis.

Elevating the legs as described above is the equivalent of transfusing two units of blood — 40% of the average adult's total circulating blood volume — and makes CPR much more effective.

This is the first thing I instruct someone to do at the scene of a cardiac arrest.