Heimlich Maneuver Or Back Blows: History Of Recommended Responses To Choking Emergencies

#1. Heimlich Maneuver Or Back Blows: History Of Recommended Responses To Choking Emergencies

Heimlich Maneuver Or Back Blows: History Of Recommended Responses To Choking Emergencies

If you take a Cpr course from the American Red Cross or the American Heart relationship you will find the article to be nearly identical. However, the two organizations have noticeably separate recommendations on how to acknowledge to a child or adult who is conscious and choking. What follows is a brief history of the recommended responses to conscious choking - a history that has been filled with controversy for nearly the last 40 years.

Heimlich Maneuver Or Back Blows: History Of Recommended Responses To Choking Emergencies

When first aid courses began being taught to the public, the accepted response to a choking victim was to give them a "back blow" or "back slap". As early as 1933 the American Red Cross was recommending this method. You can see an example of original back slaps in the film, "Field of Dreams" when Burt Lancaster's character, a physician from the 1920s, saves a choking child.

In 1974 everything changed. Dr. Henry Heimlich, who industrialized the Heimlich maneuver, often called abdominal thrusts in safety classes, published an report about the maneuver. By 1976 both the American Heart relationship and the American Red Cross had incorporated abdominal thrusts. Responders were told to give back blows, but if they failed to dislodge the object, give abdominal thrusts.

Heimlich wrote in the New York Times that back blows would cause an object to get lodged into the windpipe. This has never been proven scientifically. He also called them, "death blows."

In 1986, both organizations stopped recommending back blows. Abdominal thrusts became the only recommended response for conscious choking for children and adults.

Controversy and commentary of Dr. Heimlich began to emerge, much of it via his son Peter. Peter Heimlich has a website devoted to exposing his father as "a spectacular con man and serial liar." Dr. Heimlich is accused of confidentially funding a study in 1982 that persuaded the American Heart relationship to drop back blows from its recommended responses to choking.

Nevertheless, abdominal thrusts remained the only recommended response to conscious choking for children and adults for twenty years.

In 2006, the American Red Cross reintroduced back blows as the first response to choking. The arrival is called, "five and five." If five back blows are unsuccessful in clearing the airway, then five abdominal thrusts are used. The rescuer alternates between sets of back blows and abdominal thrusts until the object is cleared. However, the American Heart relationship has not reintroduced back blows. They continue to suggest abdominal thrusts as the only response to conscious choking for children and adults.

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