Artificial respiration: Encyclopedia II - Artificial respiration - Oxygen

Artificial respiration - Oxygen

Depending on your training and environment, you might have an oxygen first aid set at your disposal. If a patient is in a state of respiratory arrest, use a 100% mask (airtight mask) and an air balloon. This will help you ventilate the patient with pure oxygen, while "manual" insufflations will only provide about 17% oxygen to the patient.

A patient whose lungs are full of pure oxygen can stay in apnea for nearly 30 minutes (half an hour). Thus, pure oxygen is a great help which will allow you to perform urgent duty and leave the patient for a few minutes if necessary.

The task of administrating oxygen with a balloon is not very demanding, and requires only one hand. Thus, this task can advantageously be achieved by the leader of the intervention unit, who will then keep his mind free and, being at the head of the patient, have a good view of the overall situation. The head of the patient can be secured between the knees of the oxygen operator.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Oxygen", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki