American Heart Association CPR

American Heart Association CPR and Its’ Role in Your Life

For more years than some of us can count, the American Heart Association has been exploring the causes and prevention of heart disease. Through its’ countless research and educational efforts many lives have been saved and progress is made on almost a daily basis.

Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death. Prevention is one of the goals of the AHA. Obesity, diabetes and other illnesses can lead to heart disease. Usually type 2 diabetes can be prevented by controlling obesity. Learning the leading causes of heart disease, has been one of their primary objectives. Heredity, disease and other factors all contribute to it.

The instruction of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, CPR, has truly been a life saving measure that they have fine tuned. They will offer CPR classes with trained professional instructors, in a multitude of settings. Often public safety organizations offer them as a service to the community as well. Equally important is the mandatory training that is required by health care professionals and child care providers.

Beginning CPR within the first six minutes of heart arrest can prevent most brain damage, and can keep adequate oxygen flowing to vital organs until help arrives.

If the public is unable to attend classes in person, they can now take self-paced classes on the internet. The course is not free but well worth the investment. By attending the class in the comfort of your own home, on your own computer, will still enable you to receive a certificate and a card which is good for two years.

Recertification must be done after that two year period. Things change far too quickly to assume that one class or certification will last forever.

The online CPR course covers infant, child and adult CPR, just as attendance in a class with a live instructor would do. The difference is you don’t have to take the entire course in an allotted time period, but rather at your own leisure and depending upon the availability of your time.

With the current changes in CPR it is easy to see why recertification is necessary. Since the general public was hesitant to do mouth-to-mouth on a stranger, research by the American Heart Association CPR has shown that increasing the number of chest compressions will allow the blood flow to continue even without rescue breaths. They also have determined that the chest compressions needn’t be directly over the breast bone, which frequently causes broken ribs or sternum, but rather at the level of the diaphragm. If done properly it will also keep the blood flowing to vital organs.

American Heart Association CPR

The American Heart Association receives much of its’ funding through donations by the public and corporations. Grants are also received to promote the research that is so vitally important to everyone in the United States. When you consider the fact that lives can be saved by a passing stranger on any street, you will have to realize that the person probably attended either a live CPR class or one that they took online. For this you can thank the American Heart Association and it’s dedicated doctors and scientists who endlessly work to make life better for all of us.

American Heart Association CPR

Comments are closed.