It is possible that you may face a similar emergency. For in the United States alone an estimated 350,000 persons die suddenly each year. Most of these sudden deaths are from heart attacks, but many others are from gas poisoning, electrocution, drowning, suffocation and other accidents. Some experts believe that thousands of these persons could have been saved if they had received immediate help.

Illustrating what can be done is the experience of a fifty-four-year-old airline executive who collapsed on a Seattle, Washington, golf course last spring, victim of a heart attack. Several nearby youths sped to help him. No signs of breath or pulse were evident; the man had turned dark blue from lack of oxygen. From the moment breathing stops, a person can usually survive only about four to six minutes before permanent damage is done to the brain due to lack of oxygen.

So as one youth immediately began mouth-to-mouth respiration, another placed one hand on top of the other on the man’s chest and started rhythmic, strong compressions, about one per second. Each time he pressed down, the man’s heart was, in effect, squeezed, sending oxygen-carrying blood out toward the brain, just a few inches away. These repeated compressions also may stimulate the heart to beat on its own again.

Shortly, the man’s blue color began to fade. He was getting life-sustaining oxygen! Later, firemen arrived with an air-bag device to substitute for the mouth-to-mouth respiration. Thanks to the quick action of the boys, the man was still alive. Three weeks later, in mid-April, he left the hospital, without permanent heart or brain damage!

Closed-Chest Heart Massage

An even newer lifesaving technique is the squeezing of the heart by controlled hand pressure on the chest. It reportedly was originated in 1960 by a Johns Hopkins University medical team. However, for the blood forced out from the heart to contain vital oxygen, air must be supplied the lungs. This is why mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration is valuable in combination with this technique​—as illustrated by the revival of the airline executive by those youths on that golf course last spring.

If the victim’s heart has stopped for more than five minutes or so, the situation is hopeless, for irreparable damage has been done to the brain. However, apparently hopeless cases have been successfully revived, even after an hour of heart massage. This is because the heart may sometimes still beat, although the heartbeat cannot be detected without the aid of a stethoscope. So in cases of sudden heart stoppage, real or apparent, you may be able to save the victim by doing the following:

Place the heel of your right hand on the lower half of the victim’s breastbone, and your left hand atop the right. Then press the breastbone inward one and a half to two inches with a quick forceful thrust at a rate of sixty compressions per minute. At the same time someone else should be administering mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration.

Certain ones have recommended, however, that closed-heart massage should not be used except by those specially trained in it. Even when used correctly, cracked ribs can result. And when incorrectly done, the liver or a lung may be punctured by a broken rib. However, because of its proved value, the 20,000-member American College of Physicians has recently recommended that a nationwide educational program be launched to teach the general public this procedure, as well as mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration.