CPR - a lifesaving skill you need to learn

CPR - a lifesaving skill you need to learn

What is CPR? 

CPR or Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation is an emergency lifesaving procedure useful in a heart attack or drowning in which someone’s heartbeat or breathing has stopped. It combines chest compressions often with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function by maintaining blood flow to the brain and heart until medical professionals arrive and further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who is in cardiac arrest, 

Immediate CPR can double or triple the chances of survival after cardiac arrest.

Keeping the blood flow active, even partially extends the opportunity for a successful resuscitation once trained medical staff arrives. CPR is a critical step that exponentially increases the chances of the patient’s survival. 

Why is it so important?

Only one in a hundred people in Pakistan survive a cardiac arrest, one of the deadliest types of medical emergencies, according to the findings of a new registry run by researchers at Aga Khan University. 

Studies show that an individual’s chance of surviving cardiac arrest falls by up to 10 percent every minute that passes without CPR or the use of defibrillators.

A shocking 8 out of 10 cardiac arrests happen at home, however, the mass majority is not trained in Pakistan to perform CPR. CPR training means potentially saving your spouse, your children, or even a stranger’s life. The importance of family members being trained to provide immediate CPR to their loved ones magnifies if there is an aged family member or a history of heart diseases in the family. 

The time it takes to initiate CPR is the biggest impact on survival. So the community should be educated on how to perform CPR until medical officials arrive.

Researchers noted that Norway, which has had CPR in its national curriculum since the 1960s, has achieved survival rates of 25 percent from cardiac arrest. Pakistan should follow in Norway’s footsteps and make CPR training as accessible as possible. Every home across the country should have a person trained in conducting CPR as bystander CPR is a vital link in the chain of survival.

This lifesaving skill empowers normal people to become public heroes, enabling one to resuscitate someone who goes into cardiac arrest.

In areas, where CPR training is widespread and “Emergency Medical Services” response and time to defibrillation is short, the survival rate for witnessed cardiac arrest is about 30 percent.

88% of cardiac arrests occur at home. In which many victims appear healthy with no know heart disease or other risk factors. And a heart attack is sudden and unprepared for. A number of people die because of out of hospital cardiac arrest in Pakistan just because they are not able to receive immediate resuscitation or CPR.

How can you get trained to perform CPR?

Join Out of hospital cardiac arrest - Pakistan Chapter which provides CPR training to help in decreasing the number of deaths due to the unavailability of CPR to victims of out of hospital cardiac arrest on time. 

Rafay Shahab Ansari, MBBS