QUESTION: While watching a television advertisement about CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) I remembered a scene in an old movie where the doctor cut into the chest to massage the heart back into life.
You don't hear much about that anymore and I was wondering if doctors still use that method?
ANSWER: The movie must have been made before 1960, for that is the year in which Dr.
W.B.
Kouwenhoven and his associates published a now famous paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) describing closed chest massage.
Prior to that, open chest massage was the technique used, most often by surgeons during hospital based surgery.
When the heart stopped beating during an operation, the surgeon could quickly make the necessary incisions in the wall of the chest and massage the heart directly.
Investigators who studied the results of such attempts to restore life to the heart report success rates of better than 1 in 4.
However, when the technique of closed chest massage became known, the open chest heart massage was rapidly abandoned.
The standardized procedure was approved by the Red Cross, the American Heart Association and taught to millions of Americans.
A Gallup Poll back in 1977 showed that almost 15 million people had already been trained, and about half the adult population was planning to take a CPR course.
There are some advantages and disadvantages to both open and closed chest methods, the open method providing increased circulation to the body, while the closed method is readily available to all and certainly is a more acceptable concept for general use.
Recently, however, some physicians are advocating a new look at open heart techniques, with the necessary studies that could lead to recommending the open chest procedure in some special cases.
The material contained here is "FOR INFORMATION ONLY" and should not replace the counsel and advice of your personal physician.
Promptly consulting your doctor is the best path to a quick and successful resolution of any medical problem.
