WASHINGTON — Time is never more of the essence than when cardiac arrest strikes. When the heart stops beating, each minute becomes the most valuable minute of a person’s life.
Knowing just how critical it can be, Prince George’s County is offering to teach county residents hands-only CPR, with a goal of having as many people as possible trained.
“Your survivability declines by seven percent every minute you don’t have blood flowing through that heart,” said Prince George’s County Fire Chief Marc Bashoor. “It takes us seven to 10 minutes, that’s 70 percent if that’s 10 minutes, 70 percent likelihood that you won’t make it if you have to wait 10 minutes before someone initiates CPR. Those aren’t good odds.”
While traditional CPR includes the breathing of air from someone into the body of the person in cardiac arrest, Bashoor said it is easy to fill the stomach with air instead of the lungs.
“The medical field has determined it’s much more important to have blood flowing,” Bashoor said. “Keeping the blood flowing into the heart is what we hope this hands-only CPR will achieve.”
Earlier in October, paramedic Jorge Paucar offered a demonstration of the technique, something Bashoor said can be learned in as little as two minutes.
“We’re going to do 100 compressions per minute,” Paucar explained. As he found a spot roughly around the bottom of the chest plate, just below the two pectoral muscles of the training mannequin, Paucar started to pump “hard and fast. Deep. 100 compressions per minute.”
The goal is to push down about two inches.
“You do want that chest to go down and recoil up,” Paucar said. “So it has to be enough to have that heart have enough time to get some blood in there and then pump it back.”
Bashoor said the goal is to have everyone in the county trained, even though he concedes it’s way too optimistic.
“I would expect that survivability rate to be almost 100 percent, if everyone in the county was trained,” said Bashoor. “I mean that’s why it’s probably an unrealistic goal, but it’s a goal we should all be attaining toward.”
“Frankly, that’s perfection so will we ever get there? Probably not. But we need to try,” he said.
Anyone interested in learning hand-only CPR can call 301-583-1860.
See a demonstration of hands-only CPR in the video below.
