- 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 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.
On its own, it has a very low percent chance of recovery. Though it does change based on the mechanism of injury. However, it is extremely useful in prolonging the period in which other medical interventions can be successful. It very much gives time for EMTs to arrive and use defibrillators or chemical intervention.
I’m confident in your training they made it extremely clearly to call 911 and start emergency responders before starting CPR if you are the only person there.
CPR alone usually wont bring someone back, but what it does is buy time for them to get more advanced treatment that might.
There’s some exceptions, things like asphyxia and drowning have a pretty decent chance of bringing the person back if it’s done properly and promptly. In things like opioid overdoses it can buy you a couple critical minutes for cops or the ambulance to get there and shoot some narcan up their nose and then they’re back on their feet in no time flat.
Fun fact: you can get narcan to carry as a first aid measure from almost any pharmacy, and many local health departments host narcan trainings and give it out for free. Giving someone narcan when they don’t need it won’t do anything at all, so the worst you’re doing is nothing, and the best case scenario, you can save a life.
I actually performed CPR during an industrial accident. A contractor was welding at a large power plant, and someone sabotaged the acetylene bottles by opening the valves on 3 cylinders, then torquing the cap on with a pipe wrench. 3 people collapsed from asphyxiation and their entry attendant sounded an alarm, they were pulled out by a few people with SCBA’s we kept close by due to confined space entry rules. That right there was the life saver, we drug them out, administered CPR, broke the fuck out of their ribs and they started breathing again.
It was a very lucky scenario for the survivors as they collapsed and received CPR in about 120 seconds.
