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Article: The CPR debate: Has it been oversold?
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- September 6, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright (null) Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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This life and death drama happens somewhere in America every
hour of every day.
A person's heart stops, and he falls unconscious. A bystander
runs over, finds there is no chest movement, no breathing, no pulse,
and begins cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). More than 50 million
Americans have been trained to do the carefully worked out steps of
CPR: opening an airway, starting mouth-to-mouth breathing,
compressing the chest.
However, a small but growing number of critics say the widely
heralded emergency procedure has been oversold. CPR is only a
holding action, they say, and a limited one at that. It can buy only
a few minutes' time for cardiac-arrest victims until a paramedic or ...