Mouth to Mouth

Blowing directly into the mouth of a person who has stopped breathing is the oldest method of artificial respiration known to man (and akin to the oldest technique of real respiration: the Lord's wafting life into Adam's nostrils). But distaste for touching a moribund victim has brought numerous alternatives, from rolling a man over a barrel to the Nielsen "back-pressure, arm-lift" method, which last year superseded the Schafer "prone-pressure" system in the manual of the American Red Cross (TIME, Oct. 7).

The newest method goes straight back to the oldest. Among the growing number of researchers who contend that nothing beats wafting breath with the lungs is a group from Baltimore City Hospitals and the universities of Maryland and Buffalo. They measured the exact volume of air that each method forced into the lungs of 16 volunteers, all anesthetized and paralyzed with a shot of a compound resembling curare. Summarizing 27 such experiments in the current New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers found that neither trained nor untrained operators using either the Schafer or Nielsen methods under field conditions could move enough air into a victim to maintain adequate oxygenation of his blood. Reason : a rescuer's hands are not free to keep the victim's chin up and ensure free air passage through his throat.

Completely successful by contrast was the mouth-to-mouth method, in which the victim is placed on his back, mouth cleared of all foreign matter, while the rescuer leans down from the side. The rescuer raises the chin of the patient with one hand, forcing open the jaw with his thumb, holds the nose with his other hand. He then blows hard and fast, inflating the victim's lungs, stops when the chest rises so that the lungs can automatically deflate. The cycle is repeated at a rate of 20 inflations per minute until revival. For even more efficient operation (and to spare the finicky rescuer from intimate contact with more messy victims such as drunks), a rubber blowpipe with an S curve has been devised to fit the throat, prevent air from entering the stomach. Of 87 mostly untrained operators who tried the tube for the first time, say the researchers, none failed to revive his victim. Conclusion: all lifeguards, policemen, firemen and other official rescuers should carry such a pocket-size tube.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.