(Jrt)
Cardiac Arrest
A stop ventilation or cardio-respiratory arrest (CAB) is the cessation of blood circulation and respiration in an individual. It also speaks sometimes simply circulatory arrest or cardiac arrest.
The cardio-circulatory arrest does not necessarily mean the death of the victim in the event of a cardio-circulatory arrest, it must immediately prevent relief and start cardio-pulmonary resuscitation until rescue.
Epidemiology
Its annual incidence, outside the hospital, is close to 5 cases per 10 000 inhabitants in North America (more than half have attempted resuscitation in 2007).
Signs of circulatory arrest
It manifests itself in a state of apparent death:
* Deep coma areactif: the person is totally unconscious, it does not move spontaneously, or does not respond to voice or touch or painful stimulation, or light and is completely hypotonic (not "crispae" );
* Absence of carotid or femoral pulse;
* It does not receive his breath even after release of the airways: it does not feel his breath with the cheek, it is not the chest or stomach stand or stoop;
* Pallor or cyanosis (bluish secondary to the lack of tissue oxygenation);
* Wards are being set mydriasis (it expands).
The table may be more misleading:
* The patient loses consciousness and may convulse (involuntary movements and sudden jerky) in a first time, preventing any assessment of pulse or respiration, in practice it only lasts a dozen seconds;
* The patient may have a heavy breathing (breathing agony of so-called "stertoreuse" or gasp) for a few tens of seconds.
We must not confuse this agony of breathing or convulsions with:
* Syncope without cardio-circulatory arrest (pulse and breathing present);
* A seizure in epilepsy, longer, with a pulse and breathing this;
* Shock: blood pressure becomes very low prevents any perception of a pulse.
Causes
They are sometimes obvious trauma, electrocution, drowning, suffocation, poisoning, strangulation, hypothermia serious ...
We must always think of a wrong (from a food in the respiratory system instead of the esophagus). In this case, the inflations are ineffective even when the tilt of the head is correct, and it is the chest compressions that will expel the foreign body. It must then inspect the mouth after chest compressions to retrieve the foreign body that might have succeeded in expelling.
If appear isolated stop (no trauma, bleeding, shock, choking heart ...), a cause must be addressed systematically (80% of cases in France).
In these cases, the mechanism of arrest may be:
* Ventricular tachycardia (heart beating at 200 beats per minute or more) or ventricular fibrillation (300 to 400 beats per minute and so anarchic): The heart does not beat effectively and no longer plays its role pump. Several causes must be addressed: the existence of heart disease, poisoning some drugs, but also myocardial infarction;
* A asystole: the heart has ceased all activities, no more fights that can be found in some disorders of the heart conduction;
* Electromechanical dissociation: the heart has a normal electrical activity, but it does not play its role as a pump. For example, it is compressed by a hematoma, or due to hypovolemic shock: blood pressure fell too low or too fast, and the heart pump was defused (uncontrolled bleeding, loosening a tourniquet or release of a compression syndrome from ensevelis Bywaters, lower legs or decompression of anti-shock trousers on a person in cardiovascular collapse ...).
Read also Heart
wikipedia
