Manual artificial respiration

[Foxbat]

I have been, out of curiosity, recently reading a 1960s book on artificial respiration. It compared autovents, BVMs, mouth-to-mouth, etc. methods (on a side note, I was surprised to see a lot of equipment which I thought was fairly new, was already in use back then). Among other ones, it talked about manual methods (Silvester, etc.). The author's argument was that these methods are less effective than direct methods, but they can be useful, say, for a layperson who otherwise would not do mouth-to-mouth due to fear of contamination, etc.
So, when did these methods completely die and what's wrong with the author's argument? I know public nowadays isn't instructed to check for pulse and theferore treats respiratory arrest as cardiac arrest, but, if I understand correctly, this is newer trend than disappearence of manual methods.

 

[Hastings]

I have been, out of curiosity, recently reading a 1960s book on artificial respiration. It compared autovents, BVMs, mouth-to-mouth, etc. methods (on a side note, I was surprised to see a lot of equipment which I thought was fairly new, was already in use back then). Among other ones, it talked about manual methods (Silvester, etc.). The author's argument was that these methods are less effective than direct methods, but they can be useful, say, for a layperson who otherwise would not do mouth-to-mouth due to fear of contamination, etc.
So, when did these methods completely die and what's wrong with the author's argument? I know public nowadays isn't instructed to check for pulse and theferore treats respiratory arrest as cardiac arrest, but, if I understand correctly, this is newer trend than disappearence of manual methods.

I have no idea what Silvester even is.

As far as manual ventilation goes, BVM for everything. And if I'm not in a position of having the BVM nearby (off-duty), chances are I wont be ventilating someone anyway.

 

[VentMedic]

The Silvester method was introduced in the 1800s and a modification of it or another technique similar, was used for drowning victims up to the 1960s. As anything in medicine, better methods were developed. Moving the arms up and down wasn't quite the same as actually putting air into the lungs. However, some of the fundamentals of the chest compressions were used for modern CPR and now being researched as a method of alleviating air trapping in a severe or coding asthmatic.

I personally thought the bellows in the mouth was a great idea and it did lead to the modern concept of ventilators and BVMs.

The tracheotomy is one of the oldest surgical procedures. Amazingly, a tracheotomy was portrayed on Egyptian tablets dated back to 3600 BC.

The technique has been cleaned up but I still like the concept of the silver trach for the prevention of bacteria growth. Silver tubes gained popularity in the 1800s and are still found today although some are now stainless and not real silver.

 

[mycrofft]

My dad's 1941 Bluejacket Manual has some too.

We are sort of trending back that way now placing a little less emphasis on vents and more on becoming trained, careful human jackhammers. Of course they will change that again next year.

One thing those methods should make us think about is allowing patients sufficient slack around their rib cages and upper abdomens so we don't cause positional or constrictive asphyxia. Leave em enough room to expand those rib cages and drop those diaphragms if you possibly can, and if you can't, be sure to boost the O2 percent of the air they're managing to get in.

I once found a sterling silver trache tube set, polished up real pretty and made an interesting windchime/mobile until we sent it to silver recycling.