How does rescue breathing work

When you breathe, oxygen enters your bloodstream through tiny air sacs in your lungs called alveoli. Once in your bloodstream, oxygen can travel to every part of your body. Rescue breathing is also referred to as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. This helps supply them with vital oxygen until medical help arrives. Rescue breaths can be given alone or as a part of CPR.

Because of this, you may be wondering how the two are different. CPR involves cycles of chest compressions and rescue breathing. Because of this, you may find that giving CPR is more common in an emergency situation as opposed to giving rescue breaths alone. This is most applicable when rescue breathing is given as a part of CPR. In these new guidelines, the AHA recommends:.

These changes came about because the process of opening the airway and effectively giving rescue breaths can take up vital time. Research supports these changes. For example, a review found that, when CPR is given by a bystander, just giving chest compressions increased survival compared to CPR that involved both chest compressions and rescue breathing. The steps for rescue breathing on a child or infant are similar to those for adults.

However, there are some important things to be aware of. The number of breaths given per minute is slightly higher for children and infants than for adults. This is about 1 rescue breath every 3 to 5 seconds. This helps provide them with oxygen until help arrives. The steps in CPR compressions, airway, and breathing should be used whenever someone is not breathing and when their heart is not beating. If an emergenc y happens or someone becomes very sick while you're around, do your best to stay calm.

First, try to get the person to respond by gently shaking their shoulder and asking, "Are you OK? If you're alone, shout for help or call yourself.

Some people need to know how to perform CPR to do their jobs. Many medical people — from nurses and doctors to paramedics and emergency medicine technicians — must know CPR. Lifeguards, childcare workers, school coaches, and trainers usually have to learn CPR.

Many parents know how to perform CPR on kids in case of emergency. Many people — maybe you — might want to learn how to do CPR just in case they need to use it someday. The correct answer is that we can do both kinds of training, depending on the person being trained. Nothing has changed in traditional standardized CPR provider training. Students learn and practice both chest compressions and rescue breaths to be able to manage both sudden and secondary cardiac arrests.

If a person has the time, this is the recommended training to take. But what about all of those who are not able to take traditional training? Keeping in mind that sudden cardiac arrest is much more likely than secondary cardiac arrest, what about a simpler approach for the masses that can be learned in minutes with little or no practice?

In , the CPR guidelines were updated with the concept of compression-only CPR as a separate option for untrained bystanders. This was based on the concept that, for at least a few minutes, chest compressions alone could circulate the remaining oxygen in the bloodstream of a victim of sudden cardiac arrest. Evidence showed that, in this circumstance, compression-only CPR was just as effective as traditional CPR with compressions and breaths. Learning compression-only CPR is easy.

Awareness in compression-only CPR can be accomplished through things such as public service announcements, posters on walls, lunch-time talks, and short half-time presentations at sporting events. So, rescue breaths were not eliminated for trained lay CPR providers, just for the much shorter and broader awareness of compression-only CPR.

We should remain committed to providing hands-on skills training to as many people as possible in both compressions and rescue breaths. We should provide awareness training in compression-only CPR when we can, but always encouraging those participating to go further and learn more.