Most people would not care about the history of sudden cardiac arrest and the ways people have tried treating it, but it doesn’t hurt to know, and it comes off as a very interesting fact to share. There is a certain eccentricity when it comes to the different old age treatments for sudden cardiac arrest. Well, being faced with a situation such as cardiac arrest, people would have thought of treatments in a different light then.
Historical documentaries have shown that there are some very weird treatments for CPR. One treatment included the procedure of rubbing certain rough cloths as well as use some mixtures involving liquor to rub on the person under cardiac arrest. This sounds more like a thanksgiving recipe more than anything else. There are also treatments that included blowing smoke from a pipe to the mouth of a victim. This was a precursor for the implementation of mouth to mouth resuscitation. Unfortunately, this line of thinking deviated, and ended up being ‘blowing smoke into an animal bladder and releasing it in the rectum of the victim.’ Not really a good way to wake a person from near-death. Which is just so, as it is a very ineffective treatment. Finally, the craziest one in the bunch of historical CPR treatments involved the use of a horse. The victim was placed on top of the horse face down. The horse was then stimulated by a whip or some sort. This would cause the horse to move about and gallop, possibly exerting force on the chest area of the victim, stimulating the heart. This means that the treatment might have been effective for some, and doctors and scientists found out about how it works, and implemented it in the CPR that we know today.
CPR has developed interestingly throughout the years. Alongside its development, defibrillators have shown their improvements as well. Defibrillators were once only used alongside surgery, as the electric current had to be delivered to the heart. It improved and has become usable even without surgery, with the help of electropads. In modern times, there are now defibrillators that can be carried around easily, and can automatically detect signs of irregular heart beat rhythms, and deliver an appropriate amount of shock. Although not as interesting as the development of CPR throughout the years, seeing the development of defibrillators reflect the technological advancements that we have received.
These advancements have paved the way to the CPR and the AED that we have today. It is good to look back at the quirks and developments that the procedure and the equipment has undergone, but it is also important to look forward and learn about current trends and advancements. Attending a training and certification course for administering CPR and using an automatic external defibrillator can help people understand more about them as well as cardiac arrest. Getting to know these procedures can help greatly in the future, or in case someone within proximity falls victim to sudden cardiac arrest. Do your duty and get trained and informed.
