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In: Biology
Your lungs only absorb a small percentage of the oxygen you inhale so when you exhale, there is still a considerable amount of oxygen in the air you expel.
It’s by no means an ideal system. It’s far more effective to ventilate the patient with pure oxygen and a bag-valve-mask setup but you’re talking about an emergency situation where you make the most of whatever resources you have. Your body also has very little oxygen demand when you are in cardiac arrest. But nowadays, the AHA mostly recommends compression only CPR if you’re a bystander waiting for paramedics to arrive. It’s not that the breaths don’t work, it’s just that your body has several minutes worth of oxygen in circulation when your heart stops and the real challenge is circulating that oxygen to the brain. So you’re better off just doing continuous compressions and not stopping for the rescue breaths.
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