Imagine! Heimlich
Manoeuvre
by Joey
Stewart
Who ever
thought that eating could threaten your life? It comes to my mind because a few
years ago I was at a Conference of Safety Professionals; there were 200 in the
room. At the banquet food was being served, and everyone was talking and
laughing.
Suddenly, I
started to choke, coughing vigorously and terribly embarrassed. I did what most
people do, I headed for the bathroom. By the time I got through the double
doors to the hallway, I was close to being out of oxygen. I fell to my knees; I
could go no further. Brain damage occurs in four minutes without air; I knew that
– I was one of those Safety Professionals in the room.
Out of the
blue, a waitress serving the crowd put her fingers in my mouth and pulled out a
piece of fat from the pork chop I had been eating. Air flooded into my lungs. I
lay on the floor until I could recover from the shock of coming close to the
end of my life. When I got up to return to the room, I realized that not one of
the Safety Professionals in the room noticed that I was choking.
It must have
seemed like an ordinary cough to everyone in the room.
I also had a
friend who loved to chew gum. One morning she came down the stairs from her
bedroom looking more radiant than ever, chewing gum. Suddenly she was coughing
and coughing, her husband thought she’d be OK, but by the time he realized they
needed an ambulance, she was near death, and by the time the ambulance arrived,
she was dead.
Her husband
didn’t know how to give Abdominal Thrusts.
In 2022, in the
US (Canada does not have specific statistics for choking), 5,500 people died, and
two-thirds of those people were either over 75 years old, or children, often
with small toys in their mouths. Hot dogs seem to be one of the high-risk
foods. Choking is one of the leading causes of accidental deaths.
The solution in
a situation like this can be the Heimlich manoeuvre, or, as sometimes called,
Abdominal Thrusts, a lifesaving first aid technique for clearing a person’s
upper airway when they are choking.
The Red Cross
has been teaching the technique for years. It involves delivering quick, upward
abdominal thrusts – just above the belly button – to create pressure that
dislodges the foreign object.
If you’re
alone, place your fist above your navel, grab it with your other hand, and
thrust inward and upward; or, lean over a chair, table, or railing to force the
object out. For children under one year old, do not use this method because it
would be too easy to damage their fragile bodies.
Use five back
blows followed by five chest thrusts.
Better yet,
take the time to do a Red Cross First Aid class to learn from the
professionals.
Photo Credits:
Red Cross
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