Dead is the permanent cessation of all functions that keep a living organism alive. All the functions of the body are controlled by the brain. Therefore, Basic life support (BLS) knowledge is needed. It is a level of medical care given to victims during life-threatening illnesses until pharmaceutical care at a hospital. It can be administered by skilled medical personnel, including emergency medical professionals, paramedics, or qualified bystanders.
How to Bring Back Life in a Person?
To bring back a person to life, you should know BLS ( basic life support). Whenever you see a person collapse in front of you, you must follow these BLS steps:
Check for Scene Safety
You must ensure that you are in a safe place. Safe place means a place where you nor the victim will be in danger.
Check for Response & Pulse
To check for a response, you should tap the victim’s shoulder firmly and ask “ Are you alright?”. To check for pulse you should palpate the neck region (carotid artery). If the victim shows no response and you are not getting a pulse, it means that the victim is in cardiac arrest.
Call for Help
If you are not a health care professional this a very important step. Never take a step without consulting any professional person, it can risk the victims’s life.
Active ERT( Emergency Response Team)
The contact number differs in different cities. Find out in your city or call for an ambulance.
Start CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation)
CPR is provided in the following steps:
- Interlock your fingers with palm facing towards the victim and place the heel of your palm on the chest region ( at breast bone)
- Apply a firm pressure up to a depth of 5cm so that the pressure applied will pump the heart and supply blood to the brain.
- You should provide 30 compressions and then provide two breaths (mouth to mouth if no equipment is available). You should repeat this cycle for at least 4 – 5 times or more.
- Continue this till the ERT arrives.
• Once the ERT arrives, they will take care of the situation.
Tips
Have the pleasure of saving a person’s life. A person can be brought back to life only within three minutes of cardiac arrest i.e. Only within three minutes of no blood supply to the brain. If the person was lying down unresponsive for more than 3 minutes there is a high chance of he/she was dead.
While performing CPR the victim should be laid on a firm surface for effective compressions. While giving mouth to mouth breathing, you should blow into the mouth normally, that is, you should not blow hard. You will find such scenarios ( a person becoming unresponsive suddenly) mainly in shopping malls, markets, water parks, picnic spots, etc.
Points to Remember
- Do not try this at home for the sake of fun.
- Do not try this on children as children have a developing body and BLS (Basic Life support ) for children is different.
- Get trained in BLS if you are interested
- You can perform BLS only if you are confident enough and know what you are doing.
- Do watch videos to gain confidence.
- Any layman can perform this but he/she should be responsible.