I was involved in CPR on about 400 patients, when I worked as a Paramedic. About 10 of those patients walked out of the hospital. And in most of those cases CPR was only administered for a minute or two. I can still hear, and feel those ribs cracking as I destroyed the chest of some 75 year old patient.
If y'all would read the article you will see that CPR almost never saves a patient, but it can cause a lot of harm.
I have a living will and the first sentence is "No CPR."
You guys know about CPR as a miracle life saver from watching Gray's Anatomy. Gee, it always works on those tv shows, doesn't it.
The Campfire "Ignorance Is Bliss" school of emergency medicine.
Rural EMT for 15 years. Zero for 23 on CPR. Always tell folks, when God says it is your day... It is your day...
Middle sized city 55,000 +- population. Worked as an emt on the fire department with a paramedic. I only had one patient live after cpr and that was on a little old lady in church for her husbands funeral. He died the week before shoveling snow and he was worked when he went down as well. When we got the widow’s call our medic unit was tied up and the backup with 2 EMTs was sent. I couldn’t palpate a pulse and neither could the ambulance, also 2 EMTs. I think she had tachycardia and we jostled her around enough to get a conversion. This was before automatic defibrillators were available. I don’t consider her a save either. We were lucky not to have killed her doing cpr. I believe a lot of people have died as a result of CPR with a heart rhythm undetected by the people trying to help.
I probably did CPR 50 times in my career going 0 for all of them except the example sited. All but the one was with a paramedic with a defibrillator. I think CPR was created to allow first responders to do something positive regarding patient care, give the family some hope and remove the body to the hospital as fast as possible.
Oh and as far as CPR by nurses, we had a bunch of assisted living convalescent homes and if a member of the staff was doing CPR it was usually wrong. You can’t do effective CPR with the patient on a mattress. We would routinely see nurses and aids doing it on the bed and we would remove the patient to the floor and run the code from there. Emergency room nurses are the exception and knew what they were doing.
This. My wife's Dad lived with an inoperable abdominal aortic aneurysm for almost fifteen years. It could not self heal or repair due to necessary anti coagulants, (artificial heart valve). One day at age 85 it ruptured as he walked across the living room floor. Five minutes later ambulance crew arrived and started CPR.
FIL was a thin guy, the ambulance crew could see the distended abdomen, they knew he was dead before he hit the floor.
But the CPR made the Old Lady feel better and gave her some hope, for the next hour or so until we could get there.
You can't just look at next of kin and say "Tough luck, too bad, he's already dead'.
Still these numbers go into the data base to "prove" how ineffective CPR is. I have been certified, recertified and prepared to give CPR since the fall of '74. Thank God the need has never arisen in my presence.
