CPR and the Heimlich maneuver

[Steve Eisenberg]

Originally Posted by KKHB

The current recommendations and what is being taught (at least as of last month when I went through the recertification process) is that mouth to mouth should not be done.

If this is the current US recommendation, why can't I find it at either americanheart.org or redcross.org, except as something to do it you are untrained?

I was recertified about two months ago, and was taught 30 and 2. This is fewer breaths than before, but not none. I also was given a new key-chain breathing mask that says American Red Cross on it, although this was not a formal part of the course, which was certified by the Heart Association.

Originally Posted by Jahungo

I'm pretty sure if you are uncertified and you do CPR on someone and injure them, you can be held liable and sued. Even if you do it right, you can break bones in the rib cage area.
.

My CPR trainer in a hospital quotes in every session "you perform CPR because a person is not breathing and has no pulse. Therefore they are dead. You can't make things any worse by having a go!" I know a colleague who performed CPR on a patient who they successfully revived (the chances of this are slim) and the patient's daughter tried to sue them. They were unsuccessful. The legal folks decided the injury caused (2 broken ribs) was better than the alternative - being dead.

[snopes]

Comment: Yesterday, a personal trainer was telling her students during water
aerobics they must now call the Heimlich maneuver "abdominal thrusts"
because Dr. Jay Heimlich had copyrighted the term and demands payment
every time the term "Heimlich maneuver" is used.

It seems she in turn was told this in her recent first aid etc. update.

As I understand it, Dr. Heimlich may or may not have "invented" the
abdominal thrust, and the American Red Cross and other organizations
providing first aid training have standardized the technique's
nomenclature by referring to the technique to aid choking people the
abdominal thrust, but this has nothing to do with any presumed Heimlich
maneuver to collect money every time the "Heimlich maneuver" term is used
or published.

[ULTRAGOTHA]

The guy who taught our Red Cross CPR class in New Jersey in 2002 told us the same thing. They can't call it the Heimlich Manoever because Heimlich trade marked the term. So it's been around at least that long.

[GenYus234]

"Heimlich Maneuver" was trademarked back in 1978, so it has been around a long time. As to if the Heimlich Institute forces people to pay royalties, I cannot say.

[erwins]

They may have moved to "abdominal thrusts" in part to be more descriptive. What to do is pretty much there in the name.

[Latiam]

Originally Posted by Flyer64

My CPR trainer in a hospital quotes in every session "you perform CPR because a person is not breathing and has no pulse. Therefore they are dead. You can't make things any worse by having a go!" I know a colleague who performed CPR on a patient who they successfully revived (the chances of this are slim) and the patient's daughter tried to sue them. They were unsuccessful. The legal folks decided the injury caused (2 broken ribs) was better than the alternative - being dead.

Here you're covered by the Good Samaritan Act. Anything you try to do in good faith to save someone's life is free from being prosecuted or some such. I would google the exact wording but my computer is slow as a dinosaur today.

It's kind of ironic - when I came to this school 3 years ago I told my principal I had first aid and he was pretty much, "Yeah, okay, good." Didn't seem to care at all. Now he just got the Email that my certification is expiring in November and he's paying for the day to recertify. So I guess he does care.

[Troberg]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

"Heimlich Maneuver" was trademarked back in 1978, so it has been around a long time. As to if the Heimlich Institute forces people to pay royalties, I cannot say.

Trademarks does not limit the use of the maneuver, only the use of the name.

Chances are also good that the trademark on the name is more a question of raising the quality of training, by being able to limit who can teach the technique under that name, if need be. That way, if some worthless hack amateur starts selling training and teaching it wrong, well, then they can at least force them to call it something different (and thus limit the marketing potential for the bad trainer a lot).

As a side note, I'd like to add that it's a very simple maneuver to perform and everybody should learn it. I might even owe my life to it, as it saved me when I was choking so badly that I was about to black out. It was during a game of Scattergories, where eldest daughter's boyfriend had suggested, as an answer in the category "recreational activities", masturbation. I had just put a large piece of chocolate in my mouth and started laughing so hard that the chocolate slide down my throat. I just felt it slide down and get stuck. Luckily, I had had training in CPR and first aid just a week earlier at work, and managed to show him how to do it before I ran out of air completely. As it were, I got away with a sore throat for about a week, but I could very well have been dead.

It's scary to think of, I could have become known as the guy who died from masturbation.

On the other hand, the guy who helped me can now say that he has experience pumping men from behind.