this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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No, CPR is only meant to compress the heart in order to circulate blood. You can get a little in and out movement from the lungs (ventilation), but to do that correctly, you really need the bag mask thingy (which you do see One Night using on Lindsay in The Abyss.)
The length of time they spend doing CPR in The Abyss is actually pretty realistic. There are a number of things that you try in addition to compressions and you have to give those things a chance to work before you "call it" (stop compressions).
CPR is several rounds of compressions and shocks with various medications like epinephrine being given depending on what you're seeing on the heart shock monitor. Length of CPR is usually inversely proportional to the age of the patient. (The younger the patient, the longer a medical team will fight to get them back. This is because losing a kid is obviously devastating for everyone, but also because kids have this amazing tendency to be able to survive things that would 100% take an adult out.)
My bitchy complaint about the CPR scene in The Abyss is that they spend so much of that time not doing compressions. They keep stopping to do other things or to sit around and cry dramatically. Every single second that they're not doing compressions is a second that no blood is circulating. It's crazy. In real CPR, compressions only stop when a shock is actually being administered. There is zero downtime on compressions other than that.
(And no, people don't just gasp and wake up. Typically we just get a pulse and the person remains unconscious, often for days afterward. They usually need a ton of ICU level medical care, if they have any hope of recovering.)
Okay, thanks for responding. I'm really interested in medical processes.
I hear that the defibrillating paddles don't work anything like in the movies also, that they're actually meant to shock a chaotically beating, fibrillating, heart into stopping for a moment and restarting it's steady, normal rhythm and they're not even used for patients who flatlined, which is how every movie I've ever seen uses them.
Do you have any insight on that?
That's correct. So if you see a flat line there is no activity to reset with a defibrillator.
Btw, in Run Lola Run a guy gets reanimated while being conscious, Lola even takes his hand and has eye contact with him, and he smiles at her.
THAT MAN DOESN'T NEED TO BE REANIMATED, YOU DUMB AMBULANCE PROFESSIONALS :) But the movie is great.
Haha, i remember that.
I love that movie and franka potente, I can't get upset with it or her for nothing.
It is called CCR (Cardiocerebral resuscitation, or continuous compression resuscitation, or hands only cpr). It is Cpr without pausing to breath. Of the 30 compressions you are suposed to do during normal CPR before you stop for breaths, like 25 of those compressions are just getting the BP high enough to perfuse the brain, then you stop for breaths and start all over. CCR not only keeps that BP up, but you provide supplemental oxygen and a simple airway device, like an opa. It moves enough air to fill the lungs enough to oxygenate what little blood is being circulated.
It is becoming standard protocol for paramedics to do the first 3 rounds (6 minutes) of CPR as CCR as long as the arrest wasn't airway related (drowning, choking, etc). Not only is it associated with better outcomes clinically, but in the field with limited providers on scene it frees up hands to allow for medication administration and rhythm analysis/treatment.