My Tryst with Cough CPR!
This is yet another episode of my health saga; the previous ones are:
Surgery On My Second Heart! dated June 09, 2023
The Sky Gets Dark, SLOWLY! dated May 14, 2023
On Wed 14-06-2023 I suddenly got pain in the left side of my chest at around 11pm. I was coming out of the toilet to go to bed. I started rubbing the chest aggressively in a rotating motion and simultaneously woke up Vasantha, who was sleeping in the adjacent bed room. I couldn't decide whether I should go to the MSMC hospital immediately, and if so, how? Vasantha immediately called our ever-helpful neighbor Nikhil. In the meantime, recalling a social media post on Cough CPR I forced myself to cough vigorously several times.
Since the chest pain seems to have subsided, I decided not to rush to the hospital. Nikhil told Vasantha to call him anytime if I got chest pain again and had to be rushed to the hospital. However, I wanted to know where exactly I should go to in the Narayana Health City, since it is a sprawling campus with several multistory buildings catering to different specialties.
So, I called Dr Veena who stays in the same Wing as mine, and who works at NH City, explaining my dilemma. She said, 'Uncle, I can take you there now for an emergency checkup'. I said I am not planning to go right now and wanted to know, in case I have to go there later in the night in an emergency, which building I should report to. She said there is an Emergency Center behind the Cardiac Sciences Institute building and that is where I should report. When I said Nikhil has offered to take me at any time of the night, she insisted I should call her whenever I go so that she will have a word with the doctor-in-charge prior to my arrival. Dr Veena also enquired whether I have Sorbitrate tablet at home, and I said no.
By the way, this is the advantage of living harmoniously in an apartment complex. You have friends of varied backgrounds who go out of their way to help you out in any unexpected situation. Vasantha and I are indebted to our innumerable friends on this beautiful campus.
CPR and Cough CPR
CPR stands for Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation. It is an emergency life-saving procedure that is done when someone's breathing or heartbeat has stopped, after a medical emergency, such as heart attack or near drowning. CPR involves chest compressions for adults at a rate of at least 100 to 120 per minute. The rescuer may also provide artificial ventilation by either exhaling air into the patient's mouth or nose. A simplified CPR method involving only chest compressions is recommended for untrained rescuers.
Since Vasantha has not undergone any CPR training I had to rely on self-help to save myself. That is when I recalled reading the 'Cough CPR' post in WhatsApp, which suggests you can help yourself by vigorous and prolonged coughing if you think you’re having a heart attack and are alone. But I had also checked then the veracity of this social media post and found that there is no medical evidence to support ‘Cough CPR’.
This is the article I read from the Heart Matters magazine of British Heart Foundation (BHF) that debunks this myth: Could something called ‘Cough CPR’ save my life? There, Christopher Allen with his extensive specialist experience of working in coronary care, has this to say:
"The ‘cough CPR’ myth has been circulating the Internet for a while now, especially on social media sites such as Facebook. If you come across it, please avoid spreading it any further and consider letting the person who posted it know that there’s no truth in it."
Does Cough CPR Work?
However, in this panicked situation, does my scientific temperament prevail by considering Cough CPR as a hoax or does my survival instinct take over, which in hushed tones tells me there is no harm in trying Cough CPR? In my case, and at that crucial time, it is the latter choice that I willingly and enthusiastically accepted, because I had to take this split-second decision before my heartbeat completely stopped! So, I tried this method of CPR on myself and I believe that this vigorous and prolonged coughing was what stopped my chest pain!
Next morning, when I woke up without any further nocturnal incident, I thought over the self-administered Cough CPR that I performed on myself. My thought process was something like this:
The Sorbitrate tablet by Abbott is a common Nitroglycerin tablet that relaxes heart arteries so blood can flow more easily through the narrowed blood vessels to the heart. These tablets placed under the tongue, as recommended by doctors, are used for fast-acting relief from chest pain.
If that is so, can't the vigorous and prolonged coughing action shake and stimulate the heart arteries to enable better flow of blood through the narrowed vessels to the heart? Can the medical fraternity completely condemn this emergency action as a mischievous prank?
Is Cough CPR a Hoax?
Another site that I looked up later is the CPR Headquarters, which has a team of CPR experts providing information, tutorials, guides, and expert articles about CPR. This site is a bit more sympathetic about the concept of Cough CPR. On one of its blogs entitled Significance of Cough CPR it says:
Cough CPR can be helpful to anyone who is seeing the symptoms of heart attack, especially when he or she is alone.
Of course, considering the fact that most heart attacks happen when a person is alone, it does seem to be a logical idea to spread information on what to do in case there is nobody around to help them.
Cough CPR is done by coughing vigorously, and in a rhythmical manner. Each cough should be prolonged and very deep. For this to be achieved, a very deep breath should also be taken to force the cough out. The cycle of each deep breath and cough should be carried out every two seconds until any help arrives.
The coughing movement also squeezes the heart, which immediately triggers blood circulation. This also means that the heart could eventually regain its normal rhythm, making it easier for a person suffering from a heart attack to reach the phone and call for help more effectively.
On hindsight, there is a simple and a logical explanation of why the Cough CPR worked on me. My chest pain did not cause any shortness of breath or nausea and therefore was not a prelude to any heart attack. Pain in the chest could also be caused by gas in the digestive tract. When the gas collects on the left side of the colon, the pain can be confused with heart disease. But who is to know all this, when the pain happens and you need to do something frantically without much thinking and analysis?
ECG Test
On the advice of my doctor, yesterday (19-06-2023) I consulted Dr Ramakrishnakumar S of Narayana Institute of Cardiac Sciences who had performed my angiogram on 19-05-2023. He suggested an ECG Test and said there is no difference from the previous test results of last month and therefore nothing to worry about. He also showed us the angiogram CD on his computer and showed the locations of the two stents placed 12 years back. When I asked whether those are biodegradable stents he said no, they are permanent stents, and will stay in the body lifelong. He added that bioabsorbable stents are no longer used as they have their own problems.
Real-time Heart Health
Today, with advances in technology, we have Smart watches that can help make invisible chest pain instantly visible through ECG. The ECG technology in a smartwatch uses LEDs flashed against our skin to detect blood flow and measure our heart rate. Sensors collect this information and algorithms process it to make sense of our heart's rhythm. They have an electrical heart rate sensor that, along with the ECG app, allows us to record an ECG, accurate SpO2 measurements, and other heart health parameters.
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| Smart Watch ECG Chip |
If I had one of these watches with ECG chip, I could have stored data of the recordings of the rhythm of my heart and forwarded it to my doctor who would get to know how my heart is beating in real-time!
Another long and detailed account of the slight complication you met with recently I have no time to read it in detail ,you can let me know the present condition of yours through whatis app .sivan ..
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