As was already announced in Lesson 1, it
is necessary to know Basic Life Support (BLS) to pass the Intensive
Care Medicine course. If you are not confident about providing BLS, an
online First Aid textbook is available.
As we assume that students are proficient
in basic resuscitation, the text below is an overview.
First aid procedures for sudden cardiac
arrest without the use of medical devices.
We already know from the previous text
that this is a very important link in the chain of survival. Properly provided
basic CPR will allow perfusion of vital organs and thus "buy time"
until providing extended resuscitation and addressing the cause of circulatory
arrest.
These procedures are not only meant for
the non-experts in the out-of-hospital setting; their knowledge is necessary
for all healthcare professionals who will use these principles in the context
of in-hospital cardiac arrest until extended resuscitation can be provided.
For simplicity the SSS ABC acronym is used.
S – SAFETY
S - STIMULATION
S - SHOUT FOR HELP
A - AIRWAYS
B - BREATHING
C - CIRCULATION
If the cardiac arrest occurs in
a medical facility, we follow the same algorithm with several modifications
until the provision of extended resuscitation:
- instead of calling EMS, we
call a MET call/resuscitation team
- we use a bag-mask ventilation, always connected to an O2 source
(bag-mask ventilation is covered in Lesson 2)