Accidents. Resuscitation. AED. Should AED be mandatory on diving boats?

[TMHeimer]

Ideally we should all give rescue breaths when dealing with a cardiac arrest no matter what the aetiology is. It can only improve the outcome.
Not read much about this but I can imagine that the decision to recommend compression only cpr was taken after it was noticed that cpr with both rescue breaths and compressions delivered by bystanders was associated with poorer outcome when comparing to compression only cpr. This is probably multifactorial due to delays in proving effective chest compressions due to confusion about timing, communication during cpr, single vs multiple rescuers, etc. These of course are retrospective studies reflected by the quality of evidence in the recommendations- “weak or very weak evidence”. Nobody will do a clinical trial to get stronger evidence.
Regarding Insulin and Glucagon please take care as some of the pens look similar. Read what’s written on them and make sure you don’t give Insulin. As previously mentioned, glucose will make your DKA/HONK worse but won’t kill you as quick as hypoglycaemia will do. Always assume that someone is hypo rather than hyper unless you have a blood sugar reading.

What you say about giving rescue breaths or not does make sense to ME. But check out the link to ILCOR back on page 8 of this thread. It's very complicated medical/scientific talk (no one--doctor, etc.--has yet responded to my request for a dumbed down version). But it is obvious a whole lot of people are doing a lot of things in 5 year increment plans to figure out once and for all what's the best CPR method. Doubt I'll see the final tally, being age 64.

 

[Radoo]

What you say about giving rescue breaths or not does make sense to ME. But check out the link to ILCOR back on page 8 of this thread. It's very complicated medical/scientific talk (no one--doctor, etc.--has yet responded to my request for a dumbed down version). But it is obvious a whole lot of people are doing a lot of things in 5 year increment plans to figure out once and for all what's the best CPR method. Doubt I'll see the final tally, being age 64.

TMHeimer, in the ILCOR Consensus there are only a couple of take away messages that are applicable to us:

1) "We recommend that dispatchers provide chest compression–only CPR instructions to callers for adults with suspected out-of-hospital cardiac arrest(OHCA) (strong recommendation, low-quality evidence)"
2) "We continue to recommend that bystanders perform chest compressions for all patients in cardiac arrest (good practice statement). In the 2015 CoSTR, this was cited as a strong recommendation but based on very-low-quality evidence.19,20
We suggest that bystanders who are trained, able, and willing to give rescue breaths and chest compressions do so for all adult patients in cardiac arrest (weak recommendation, very-low-quality evidence)."

In summary, if you're not confident to give rescue breaths without minimising intreruptions in chest compressions then compressions only CPR is what the dispatcher will advise you to do. If you are willing to give rescue breaths and you know what you're doing then you should go ahead and give those breaths.

 

[SapphireMind]

Thank you @Radoo - I thought I had summarized it, but not clearly enough obviously

I especially agree with your statements that having a major event while far from a hospital is unlikely to end well. True for everyone, even when not diving!

 

[TMHeimer]

TMHeimer, in the ILCOR Consensus there are only a couple of take away messages that are applicable to us:

1) "We recommend that dispatchers provide chest compression–only CPR instructions to callers for adults with suspected out-of-hospital cardiac arrest(OHCA) (strong recommendation, low-quality evidence)"
2) "We continue to recommend that bystanders perform chest compressions for all patients in cardiac arrest (good practice statement). In the 2015 CoSTR, this was cited as a strong recommendation but based on very-low-quality evidence.19,20
We suggest that bystanders who are trained, able, and willing to give rescue breaths and chest compressions do so for all adult patients in cardiac arrest (weak recommendation, very-low-quality evidence)."

In summary, if you're not confident to give rescue breaths without minimising intreruptions in chest compressions then compressions only CPR is what the dispatcher will advise you to do. If you are willing to give rescue breaths and you know what you're doing then you should go ahead and give those breaths.

Yes, thanks for description for a layman. What you said is what I figured.
Crazy man-- "If I think I can do breaths that I should do them".