Sometimes such situations happen when a person stops heart, and medical care cannot be provided professionally. In this case, the only right solution for others will be an indirect heart massage. Direct indications for such a decision are any reasons that entailed a cardiac arrest. As a rule, it is difficult to establish an accurate diagnosis outside a medical institution, especially if the people around you are not doctors. However, the most common causes - acute heart failure, coronary artery spasm , trauma, myocardial infarction - require immediate intervention.
The most common cause of confusion is the inability to diagnose a cessation of heartbeat. In a panic, others forget the basic signs of cardiac arrest. These include: sudden blanching of the skin, deep fainting, lack of pulse (which is especially easy to check on the carotid artery), the disappearance of breathing, dilated pupils. If such signs are found, it is worth immediately starting an indirect heart massage, since there is not much time for resuscitation.
Usually, the time of clinical death is considered to be the first six minutes after cardiac arrest, since then there are irreversible changes in the brain and further resuscitation entails severe disability.
Indirect cardiac massage alone is not complicated. However, when conducting it, you need to know basic information. Usually the massage is completed when the first signs of vital activity are visible - the appearance of breathing, the reaction of the pupils, the pulsation of the carotid artery.
So, immediately after cardiac arrest , massage should begin. There are some advantages - if you conduct a direct massage of the heart, then you need to spend time on the dissection of the chest, because this type of massage is done exclusively during heart surgery, if the organ cannot be made to work with other methods. Indirect cardiac massage is an opportunity to start doing right away.
To begin with, the patient should be placed on a flat, solid surface. Anyone doing the massage can be on either side of the body. In this case, the massage therapist’s palm is placed on the lower part of the sternum. In order to increase the pressure and give the movements a jolting force, a second palm is placed on top. Starting the movement is supported by the weight of the whole body. The shocks should be pretty intense - about one push per second. You can’t constantly hold your hands on top of the sternum - blood should freely penetrate, and the chest should be straightened. Usually, in order to make it easier to pour blood to the heart, the legs of the victim are raised slightly.
One heart massage will be ineffective if respiratory movements are not included. At the same time, it is better if another person is responsible for breathing, who, according to the "mouth-to-mouth" (best of all) or "mouth-to-nose" type, will pump air into the lungs. The regimen of resuscitation measures should be correlated as 1 to 5 - one respiratory movement and five cardiac pressures.
Indirect cardiac massage is different in adults and in children. For adults, you need to make about eighty turns per minute with intense bending of the sternum. With careless movement, a rib can break, especially if a heart massage is given to an elderly person. In young children, an indirect massage is done with one hand, and in newborns with two fingers. The intensity of the shocks should be greater - about a hundred per minute, since the child’s heart normally works faster than an adult.
If you decide to do an indirect heart massage, then do not neglect qualified help - you must immediately send someone for doctors. With a successful massage of a person in the future, it will be necessary to hospitalize, examine and take appropriate treatment measures.