What methods may be used to provide artificial respiration to an unconscious patient when not in an emergency room?

Answer 1

First, not all unconscious patients are in respiratory distress or respiratory arrest. So the first step is to make sure if the person is or is not breathing.

If the person is not breathing, the first step is repositioning of the neck / head to reopen the airway. Often, this is allthat is needed for an unconscious person! By tilting the chin up, it opens the throat / airway. Second is to make sure there is no obstruction in the airway. Look and sweep the mouth. If something is lodged, the Heimlich Maneuver can remove the obstruction and prevent respiratory arrest, which will progress to cardiac arrest if not corrected.

Even if you find a person in respiratory arrest, you should do the neck repositioning to open the airway and check for obstruction. Then, you would begin mouth-to-mouth CPR. You MUST check for heartbeat BEFORE doing chest compressions! If the heart IS beating, but the person is not breathing, ALL that is needed is artificial respirations to maintain the heart and lungs. But if you do chest compressions when the heart is already beating, you can cause irregular heartbeat that then can cause cardiac arrest.

Besides checking that air returns out of the person receiving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, you will also momentarily stop and check to see if the person has resumed breathing on their own. If not, you would continue rescue breathing until medical help arrives, periodically checking both natural breathing and heartbeat. You will also continually check that your breaths are going into the person's lungs-- a sign that the air is not going to the lungs is the person's belly will begin to swell. This puts pressure on the diaphragm and not allow the person's lungs to expand. Reposition the patient's neck/head to open the airway more, and resume rescue breathing. The chest should rise and fall without causing the person's stomach to fill with air.