- A 63-year-old man died on a Lufthansa flight on Thursday, according to Swiss-German outlet Blick.
- Witnesses told the outlet the man had blood gushing from his nose and mouth.
- The witnesses said passengers were screaming at the sight.
I’m a 911 dispatcher, I’ve talked people through CPR countless times over the phone, I have very little confidence that most of them were doing it properly because CPR really is pretty brutal, I’ve taken a lot of CPR classes over the years, and every instructor I’ve ever had has mentioned that if you’re doing it right there’s a very good chance you’re breaking ribs in the process. Unless you’ve actually had training and have an idea how rough it can be I doubt that most people are going to do it hard enough out of fear of hurting the patient.
I’ve luckily never had to do CPR in person myself, although I was once on-scene while it was being performed. I was at a party, someone came inside said they think someone died out front, I went out to see what was going on, came around the corner of the driveway and my friend was already doing CPR on a guy laying in the street who crashed his motorcycle. I know my friend also had CPR training so I let him keep at it, I stood by to relieve him in case he got tired and started counting to make sure he was keeping a good rhythm. I of course know my share of cops, firefighters, EMTs, etc. who have had to do CPR in their line of work, but I don’t exactly press them for any details about it, but I talked to my friend afterwards to make sure he was OK, and he talked about how he could really feel the guys ribs popping as he was doing it.
It was also a pretty good illustration of the bystander effect, when my friend got outside there was already one or two other people pulled over with the accident but not really doing anything, not checking on the guy, not on the phone with 911, just kind of standing there. If you asked them, I’m sure they probably would have said they were blocking traffic with their vehicles or something, but that doesn’t really do any good when the guy needs CPR immediately.
CPR is like blowing into a cartridge game expecting it to work again. It hardly ever works and if it does, it’s not going to work next time unless there are some major changes.
That is so utterly wrong. It all depends on the cause of death. Especially sudden traumatic deaths, such as choking or drowning, where the rest of the body was little impaired, have crazy high recovery chances if immediate and persistent CPR is applied.
And even on chronically I’ll patients, e.g. the commonly thought of cholesterol caused infarction and subsequent heart attack has a good chance to recover. Modern medicine is amazing!
But in most cases, you simply won’t know in the moment why somebody dies. And does it matter? You can make assumptions, but you could be totally wrong. So leave that part to the EMTs and doctors. Your job as a human in that moment is to give someone the best chance they will get to experience more life.
In all cases the chances of survival and recovery sink with literally every second, which is why it can be so frustrating to see people too scared or cynical to even try. What are you afraid of? You can’t make em any more dead. And I truly hope anyone would be willing to “waste” the time and effort to at least try if I suddenly died. Even if your CPR is too weak, too strong ( yes, also possible, albeit very rare), too slow or too fast: the by far worst CPR is the one not given at all.
And I can promise you this: you will never regret having attempted to do CPR, even if there is no resuscitation.
I am sorry if I offended you. I wasn’t being dismissive of CPR. I actually am certified by the Red Cross for CPR and my mother and sister are nurses. I was under the impression it was a last ditch effort that hardly ever works. And if it does it’s usually broken ribs and hard to recover from when they are extremely elderly.
