When he saw that man lying on the ground, he thought of the life-saving maneuver seen the night before in the television series ‘Doc’, and intervened. “It was my birthday, but I was at home grounded because I hadn’t behaved very well with my parents – said the 14-year-old student -. Thank goodness, I feel like saying now.”
The prognosis for the man remains reserved “but, without my intervention, the doctors told me he would have died” adds the boy who retraces the stages of the story, which happened on Sunday in the Veronese area.
The boy’s intervention
The man’s wife was terrified, says the young man: “She was on the phone with an 118 operator, so I took the cell phone from her hands and communicated our exact position. At that point, the doctor asked me if I I felt like doing a cardiac massage, and I said yes.”
The boy continued the maneuver for about fifteen minutes until the ambulance arrived and then the air ambulance which took the man to hospital. But what is cardiac massage? And how do you carry out this maneuver which can be very valuable in emergency situations?
The life-saving maneuver
This is a major life saver and is taught in any first aid course. It is practiced in case of cardiac arrest and serves to “mimic” the activity of the heart to allow blood and therefore oxygen to reach the organs. It allows you to avoid irreversible damage. In fact, once the heart stops working and pumping properly, the chances of survival decrease by 10% every minute. After five minutes with a stopped heart the brain can have permanent damage.
How to do cardiac massage
In an emergency situation, the first thing to do is call 118. This way you can receive the necessary information.
The rescuer must place his hands and arms outstretched in the center of the chest, one must be open and the other must be on top. At that point a sequence of 30 compressions must be done.
Each compression must be followed by complete relaxation of the chest. A series of 30 compressions must be completed at a rate of at least 100 per minute.
The ribcage must descend by approximately 4-6 centimeters at a rate of approximately one hundred per minute, alternating with two mouth-to-mouth ventilations of one second each to bring oxygen. Immediately afterwards, another 30 compressions are required.
It is essential to never stop during this rescue. There may only be small pauses of less than 5 seconds and you need to count the compressions out loud. After a minute you can feel if the heartbeat has returned and continue, continuing to check every thirty seconds.
For inexperienced rescuers it is essential to call emergency services to receive all the necessary information over the phone.