“Breathe, please just breathe! It’s not your time yet, Marjorie! I can’t lose you like this – not here, not now!”
Such hinge moments in films and soap operas can be overwrought, but more worryingly, when TV heroes administer life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), they are probably doing so all wrong and setting a bad example for real-life lifesavers.
Or at least they’re using “outdated” methods, according to University of Pittsburgh medics in the United States.
The clinicians worry that TV depictions of CPR could lead people astray should they need to really give CPR in a life-or-death situation.
TV viewers are still given the impression they should do pulse checks and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, despite the American Heart Association’s (AHA) 2008 endorsement of ”hands-only” CPR, a two-step intervention that comprises:
- Calling the emergency services (999 in Malaysia)
- Starting chest compressions.
According to the researchers, less than 30% of 169 TV portrayals of CPR aired since 2008 showed the proper technique, with almost half depicting pulse checks and the drama-adding mouth-to-mouth trope.
“Scripted television often shows outdated CPR techniques for lay people, potentially fuelling misconceptions that could delay bystanders’ lifesaving interventions in the crucial moments after a cardiac arrest,” they said.
ALSO READ: Bystanders less likely to perform CPR on women in public
“In my volunteer work training Pittsburgh youth in CPR, there’s a lot of confusion.
“We ask students, ‘What’s the first thing you do?’ and they say, ‘Check for a pulse.’
“But we don’t do that in bystander CPR any more,” said study corresponding author and assistant professor of behavioural and community health sciences Dr Beth Hoffman.
Bystanders who know how to carry out CPR “can double or triple the chance of survival” for heart attack victims, the team said in a paper published in the AHA journal Circulation: Population Health and Outcomes. – dpa
