How to save someone who was electrocuted in water?

[Stargate38]

I can't find an answer for this anywhere. I even tried to Google it, but came up with nothing:

If someone gets electrocuted while swimming or doing something else in water, how do you save his/her life? What can you do to make his/her chance of survival approach 100%? Would CPR be the best approach? I really want to know.

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by Stargate38

I can't find an answer for this anywhere. I even tried to Google it, but came up with nothing:

If someone gets electrocuted while swimming or doing something else in water, how do you save his/her life? What can you do to make his/her chance of survival approach 100%? Would CPR be the best approach? I really want to know.

http://www.epa.state.il.us/water/fie...procedures.pdf and electrocution does suggest CPR be tried at least.

[Xyzzy]

Step 1: Ensure that you don't get hurt.

Seriously.

[Jeff Gilchrist]

Electrocution is death caused by electric shock, so if they were actually electrocuted, there is nothing you can do.

I'm assuming you mean what to do if someone received an electric shock.

Here a couple of links to information:

• http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fir...-shock/FA00051
• http://firstaid.webmd.com/electric-shock-treatment

As Xyzzy said, you have to be very careful you don't become a victim yourself. If they are in water, you have to first find and turn off the source of electricity first, and if you can't do that, you need to wait for the professionals to arrive.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Jeff Gilchrist

if you can't do that, you need to wait for the professionals to arrive.

What kind of medical treatment would be more appropriate in such a happenstance - leeches or eels?

The latter hair-of-the-dog-style treatment would of course give us a new phrase: "'eeling the sick".

[henryzz]

Ironically an electric shock by a defibrillator could be the thing that saves someone after being shocked.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by science_man_88

electrocution does suggest CPR be tried at least.

Originally Posted by henryzz

Ironically an electric shock by a defibrillator could be the thing that saves someone after being shocked.

CPR keeps the brain (it is the most sensitive organ to hypoxia) from dying until a defib can restart the heart.

Current best practice for CPR is 30 chest compressions then 2 breaths.
If for some reason you don't/can't do the breaths, you can do "hands only CPR", just keep the compressions up.

The compression tempo should be ~110 per minute. It just so happens that there is an ear worm song that everyone knows that has about that same beat (this is in all seriousness mentioned in CPR classes, I had my refresher about 3 months ago):

Sing that to yourself and your tempo will be fine.

[Dubslow]

I remember hearing they recently got rid of the breaths entirely?

[only_human]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

I remember hearing they recently got rid of the breaths entirely?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23884566...new-cpr-rules/
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/h...e-breathing-ok (when laypeople do CPR)

"We found that survival in the chest compression alone group was 12.5% and survival in the conventional CPR group was 11%," Rea tells WebMD.

These articles don't seem to mention the time factor but it matters. Compression alone is using up the oxygen in the blood.

This is better:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...072804731.html

There is good evidence that victims of cardiac arrest fall into two groups -- one group harmed by rescue breathing and one group helped by it. The first group is far larger than the second, which is why eliminating rescue breathing makes little difference overall.

In the Washington State-London study, 70 percent of victims had a "cardiac" cause for their cardiac arrest -- usually a heart attack or angina attack. Those people probably had a lungful of air to call upon at the start of CPR.

On the other hand, 30 percent had a "non-cardiac" cause for their arrest -- a drug overdose, a choking episode, a weakness of the chest muscles. Their breathing had slowed down, depleting lungs and blood of oxygen, before their hearts stopped.

In people with a cardiac cause, 15 percent getting only chest compressions survived, compared with 11 percent who got standard CPR. In the people with non-cardiac causes, however, the trend was in the other direction. Fewer survived (5 percent) if they got only chest compressions than if they got standard CPR (7 percent).

Is it possible to distinguish the two groups in the field?

"The published evidence is that the EMS personnel usually can't tell," said Sayre, the physician leading the rewrite of the CPR guidelines.

When it comes to rescue breathing, "we are not ready to throw it out," said Myron L. Weisfeldt, a cardiologist and CPR researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who wrote an editorial in the journal.

Nevertheless, it appears increasingly clear that in adults who collapse without a pulse, doing only chest compressions might be doing a lot.

[joblack]

Call the ambulance?

Anyway, I think it's time to have another Mersenne prime. ^^

[henryzz]

At least Nellie the elephant is good for something.