Brief overview
- What is mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? A first aid measure to ventilate a person who is no longer breathing or not breathing adequately themselves.
- Procedure: Slightly hyperextend the person’s head. Hold his nose and blow his own exhaled air into the patient’s slightly open mouth.
- In which cases? In cases of respiratory arrest and cardiovascular arrest.
- Risks: In the first responder: risk of infection from inhaled pathogens, “eye flicker” (small points or flashes of light in front of the eyes) from the effort of breathing. In the patient: vomiting due to inhaled air in the abdomen, vomit can obstruct the airway.
Caution.
- If you are very unsure of how exactly to give breaths in cardiac arrest, or fear a possible risk of infection, you can dispense with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and give only cardiac pressure massage, without interruption.
- Gasping is not normal breathing! It can occur in the first few minutes of a cardiovascular arrest. In this case, you should absolutely resuscitate (resuscitate) the victim.
- Check regularly to make sure that you do not inadvertently stretch the unconscious person’s head back too far during rescue breathing. This could obstruct the airway!
How does mouth-to-mouth resuscitation work? A guide
When giving breath in the form of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, you as a first responder blow your exhaled air into an unconscious person who is no longer breathing.
Here’s how:
- Lay the unconscious person flat on his back.
- Kneel down next to his head.
- With one hand, now grasp the unconscious person’s chin and pull it slightly upward (this will slightly hyperextend the head). Use the thumb of the same hand to hold the patient’s mouth open.
- Place the second hand on his forehead and close his nose with thumb and index finger.
- Then detach yourself from the unconscious person’s mouth (but continue to hold his head) and see if his chest now lowers again.
- Repeat the whole procedure once.
- After the second breath delivery, you should start heart pressure massage, which you then alternate with renewed ventilation. Experts recommend a 30:2 rhythm, i.e., 30 cardiac compressions and 2 breaths alternately.
- Continue resuscitation until the victim is breathing normally again or the alarmed rescue service arrives!
Variant: Mouth-to-nose resuscitation
If the unconscious person’s mouth cannot be opened or is injured, you can perform mouth-to-nose resuscitation. It is similarly effective as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but a bit more difficult to perform. This is because it is not easy to keep the mouth of an unconscious person tightly closed while giving breaths (soft lips!).
This is how mouth-to-nose resuscitation works:
- Place one hand on the unconscious person’s forehead and the index and middle fingers of the other hand under his chin.
- Stretch the patient’s head slightly back into the neck: To do this, push the head back slightly with the hand on the forehead, while pulling the chin up slightly with the other hand.
- Now place the thumb of the “chin hand” under the unconscious person’s lower lip (index and middle fingers remain under the chin) and press it firmly against the upper lip to close the mouth.
- Breathe in normally. Then surround the unconscious person’s nose with your lips and blow in your exhaled air for about one second. If successful, the chest will rise.
- After giving breaths, check to see if the unconscious person’s upper body lowers again.
- Now give a second breath donation, followed by cardiac pressure massage (see above).
Breath donation in the child
When do I give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?
Give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation if someone loses consciousness and is no longer breathing (sufficiently) or suffers a cardiovascular arrest. Do this quickly: Just a few minutes without oxygen will cause severe brain damage and lead to death.
Continue administering breaths (alternating with cardiac massage) until the victim is breathing again on his or her own (remember to keep the patient in the recovery position) or until the rescue service arrives.
If several rescuers are present, ideally alternate every two minutes during resuscitation. It is very strenuous. Therefore, call for help loudly at the earliest possible moment if you encounter an unconscious person alone.
Risks of adult rescue breathing
The injected air cannot reach the lungs, or only with difficulty, even if you as a first-aider stretch the head of the unconscious person too far. This narrows the patient’s airways.
If the patient has an infection, there is a certain risk of infection for you as the first aider due to the breath donation. However, this risk is very low.
Donating your own breath can lower the carbon dioxide content in your own blood. The first aider recognizes this by a flicker in front of his eyes. He should then take a short break during mouth-to-mouth (or mouth-to-nose) resuscitation or have someone relieve him.
