‘Basic life support can save lives’

Nagpur: Every day, there are so many incidents which can result in serious injury and cause a person to stop breathing. These occurrences require fast action where basic

life

support, a primary medical aid provided to a person in an emergency, plays an important role. Keeping this in mind, a workshop was organized by the Nagpur chapter of Society of Critical Care Medicine at Chitnavis Centre to train people in basic life support, on Sunday.

Speaking at the workshop, intensivist Imran Noormohammed said the training is aimed at teaching the participants how to give basic treatment to a person who needs help in an emergency medical condition. With every passing minute, the chances of death increase and therefore it is necessary to provide basic treatment to the sufferers as early as possible.

“Basic life support (BLS) is an emergency medical treatment which is used when a victim’s heart stops beating. BLS procedure circulates a minimal amount of oxygenated blood throughout the person’s body to slow down the rate of damage to different parts of the body. While this is not a sustainable method of protecting life, it is a time-buyer before emergency care arrives,” he added.

BLS certification is a relatively short training course which most clinical health professionals should undertake to help revive, resuscitate, or sustain a person who has a cardiac arrest or respiratory failure of some sort.

The procedure is mainly used on people experiencing cardiac arrest or respiratory failure. Around 7 lakh people face cardiac arrest every year in Europe most of whom could be saved by giving basic life support. With this procedure, breathing and heartbeats of a person can be controlled to a certain extent. However, it is important to provide professional medical care to the patient.