if giving CPR orally, how does the CO2 from our lungs affect theirs if they need oxygen? Like, don’t they need oxygen in their lungs to go into their bloodstream to reach their brain? If were taking a deep breath of oxygen, our lungs immediately convert it to CO2, a waste product, however during oral CPR we instead breath that into the mouth and lungs of the recipient.
In: Biology
CPR really isn’t that effective…i mean it’s better then nothing, but the actual rate of saving someone is very low. I’ve been CPR certified for the last 20 years and have had several instructors tell me the same thing
When you breathe, you do not use up all of the oxygen that was in the air, and breathe a notable percentage of it back out again.
When you have to perform CPR on someone not breathing, there is no easy way to provide fresh air with a normal oxygen content without additional tools. In this situation even though the reduced oxygen content in your breath is not ideal, it is still much better than no oxygen at all.
Remember that CPR is something you should only ever be doing in an emergency – when someone is non responsive and without heartbeat or breathing, and there are no other options available. You want to be calling in they professionals immediately, and as soon as a medic with the proper knowledge and equipment is there you want to be letting them take over with more advanced methods.
The newer recommendations actually say that the breaths aren’t as important as the compressions and can therefore be relatively forgotten as getting the heart started/in rhythmic the best thing. I think the breaths do help as if you’re forming a tight enough seal then it’s a direct transfer with enough oxygen in the ‘waste’ we breathe out to provide oxygen for the other person. The breaths also act as stimulatory to keep the lungs in motion
You don’t convert all, or even most, of the oxygen in each breath to carbon dioxide. The air you breathe out certainly has less oxygen and more CO2 than the surrounding environment, but it still has more than enough oxygen to support life.
Badly.
Exhaled air has barely enough oxygen to maintain consciousness at the best of times, and not enough to regain consciousness if your blood oxygen levels have fallen too low to stay conscious, and the compressions are not able to restart a heart – they’re a sub-optimal way to keep blood moving around.
It’s basically an ultra low grade life support system that will slow the dying process.
It doesn’t work like in the movies where the victim coughs and lurches awake. Instead, with a **lot** of luck, an ambulance will hopefully arrive with oxygen and drugs before the person is dead and can keep them from dying long enough to hook them up to a hospital life support system. If you’re not right outside a hospital the chances of this are somewhere in the region of 5%.
The air you breathe in is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% other stuff. The air you breathe out is 78% nitrogen, 16% oxygen, 5% CO2, and 1% other stuff. These numbers are approximate, but you get the idea. There’s plenty of oxygen.
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