Summary: CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation is a technique used to save people whose heart and lungs have decided to quit by heroically mashing ones hands and face into a person’s face and chest. It’s a hallmark medical system, right up there with the Heimlich maneuver or “Not Applying Leeches for Every Medical Ailment”. And while it can be an important tool in the fight against the icy, relentlessly tightening grip of death, it turns out that, for a number of reasons, you’re still probably going to die. 5. Resuscitation is Poorly Understood It doesn’t take a Planned Parenthood security guard to tell you that the point at which human life begins is a little bit of a contentious issue. The point at which we can declare something to be dead is similarly fuzzy. Until the late 1700’s, we tended to go with “did he flinch when poked with a sharp stick?” line of diagnosis. This all started to change when the Dutch got sick of the stupid bastards who were clogging up their beloved canals. Lacking the necessary 1-900 psychics to ridicule people in the spirit world, they set about developing a system to revive those who’d drowned. The British soon followed with their hilariously named “Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned” which was managed by the even more stereotypically English “Royal Humane Society for the Apparently Dead”. That is totally true, and yes, they did spend more time on politeness than legitimate medical science. Problem solved! The methods they developed included bleeding by leeches (naturally), tickling the throat, variations on getting people upside-down and even literally blowing smoke up person’s rectum. Given how that last practice has passed into the common vernacular, you can imagine how well this went over. Fortunately, there was some success with two techniques: pressing down on abdomens and doing respirations. These actually caught on, though the physiology was poorly understood. For example, it took about two hundred years for people to realize that the airways needed to be clear for air to go in them. Science, circa 1799. Even after hundreds of years of progress, we’re still trying to figure out the magic formula. There are conferences, research and symposia on the matter. And yet, the jury is still out on the basic concepts of CPR, like the ratio of compressions to breaths, or whether to slam on your fragile organs instead of your heart or even whether to administer mouth-to-mouth at all! Hopefully your would-be savior has kept up to date on the major medical journals. Also, thanks to science, we’re also doing our best to generate some cutting edge or “wacky” techniques. Therapeutic hypothermia, for example, involves intentionally reducing your temperature to low levels to induce some kind of hibernation or something. We’re not totally sure, but it definitely seems pretty awesome. Not that it will do you much good unless you decide to keel over during the Iditarod. They probably don’t even have the KFC Doubledown up there. Savages. 4. The Education is Suspect We’ve seen it on TV, where someone suddenly flops over and they’re unresponsive but some anonymous hero immediately jumps in with the golden phrase: “Stand back! I know CPR!”. It’s the next best thing to having a real doctor. Or a nurse. Or an EMT. Or a fireman… police officer… the point is, “guy who took a lifesaving class at the Y” is probably in the top ten. We’d probably trust the dentist more. He deals with mouths every day. Oh, and lifeguard should be in there somewhere. Anyway, the idea is that the Average Joe can also be a hero if they simply take part in some rigorous CPR training. Except for the rigorous and the training parts. To truly maintain your certification through the American Red Cross, you need to take a refresher course every year (in most states). That means a fee and more time out of your busy schedule, so you can guess how many people who don’t have to maintain it for their work bother to stay consis[...]
