To say that with simple gestures we can save lives is a bit “cream pie”, a bit cliché … And yet, when it comes to cardiac massages, it is cruelly correct! 100,000 lives could be saved every year in Europe if people took the time to learn this very simple technique. But there is a lot of work to get there … Especially with us in France.
The recent example of this man who survived 18 hours of heart failure proves at least one thing. In total stop or not, the simple fact of having massaged it allowed the life to take again the top.
What to do in the event of cardiac arrest?
You have to massage! This is a situation we don’t really think about until we are confronted with it … Until someone collapses in front of us on a sidewalk … What to do when faced with a person making a heart attack, once of course we called for help?
To massage is to press very hard in the middle of the thorax. This will be enough to maintain a light traffic while waiting for the professionals. No excuses, everyone saw this on TV.
The principle of massage?
It is to reactivate the pump that is the heart. The heart is above all a very simple muscle, which serves as a pump. You just have to press really hard for that muscle to keep doing the job. Not enough to resume its activities, but to ensure that the noble organ, the brain continues to be supplied with a little blood, therefore oxygen.
For how long ?
The problem of time is played out in two dimensions:
When stopping, you have to go quickly because there is 10% more mortality per minute that goes by without doing anything.
Then even without knowing the technique, the simple fact of pressing on the region of the heart causes a minimum of blood circulation which can maintain the little trickle of life. So, once the emergency services have been notified, we must not stop. It is a rescue professional who will take over and decide to stop.
At what rate?
A tip. We always wonder at what pace to do the massage. The Americans do it, very officially, to the rhythm of Staying Alive by the Bee Gees.
Do you absolutely have to do word of mouth at the same time?
This was the rule a few years ago. This is no longer the case today. Massage is the top priority.
Can anyone improvise it ?
Improvising it is much less good than reciting it. Every year in Europe, 350,000 people die of cardiac arrest. When this stoppage occurs outside the hospital, cardiac massage is only performed once in 5! Out of loneliness – it can happen – but most of the time out of ignorance … It’s mind-boggling. But the worst is yet to come ! In France, 15% of people know about emergency procedures compared to 60% in Sweden. Terrible consequence: in France, 5% of victims of cardiac arrest survive; 40% in Sweden. We calculated that we could save 100,000 lives per year; a lot in France.
EIs “trying a cardiac massage” when you haven’t learned how to do it take a risk of making things worse?
No, it’s difficult to make death worse …
You can see defibrillators everywhere. Is it easy to use it?
Absolutely yes. Because if the heart is a muscle, it is also a pile … And in many cases of stop, it continues to beat, but the rhythm of the beats is so abnormal that the cardiac contractions are ineffective and the heart cannot more circulate the blood. He is said to be in “fibrillation”. So we need … a defibrillator!
The Samu has some very powerful ones but if it arrives too late, this little device which is in strategic places, will make you, the man of the miracle; on condition of sending the electric shock which will “debug” the battery, as quickly as possible. And above all, do not be afraid to do wrong, and no need to repeat it is enough to know how to read. Once in place, the machine takes control, without asking for your permission.
Where can we learn?
There is no age to get started, because, apart from civic-mindedness not particularly developed among the French, in 9 out of 10 cases, it is on someone very close that we owe it. do … So go and see, on the sites of the Red Cross, the Fire Department or your town hall, the place where you can learn. Finally, we must still insist on a Franco-French scandal: It’s great that our children learn to dissect frogs in SVT, but it’s a real scandal that they leave primary school without having spent the two hours – that’s all, two hours is nothing – to learn these gestures, for life.
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