Pastor Adrian Lynn was belting out tunes in church last august when it happened. It was heart trouble, and with help on the way, parishioners started CPR that was coached by dispatchers over the phone.
"And along the way, we were learning don't give him mouth to mouth, just give him the chest compression," Pastor Terrell Matthews, a relative, told Ivanhoe.
"If somebody gets compressions within the first minute, they actually have survival rates in some studies as high as 80 percent," Cameron Dezfulian, M.D., a critical care specialist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, told Ivanhoe.
"He said that probably saved my life," Pastor Lynn told Ivanhoe.
Chest compression only CPR requires no training. Just put your hands in the middle of the chest and push. Do it right, and you can supply up to 20-percent of a person's normal blood flow.
The ideal pace is 100 compressions per minute. That's the exact number of beats per minute in the famous Bee Gees tune, "Stayin' Alive."
A new study shows folks who listened to that song performed CPR correctly and remembered the technique five weeks later. Another study found heart attack survival improved by 22-percent when bystanders were coached to do chest compression CPR.
"They're all amazed. Everybody says that I'm a miracle," Pastor Lynn said.
Now fully healed, Pastor Lynn is ready to make a return to center stage.
While chest compression CPR is now the recommended approach, it should never be tried on kids under 10. For them, traditional CPR -- chest compressions combined with mouth-to mouth-resuscitation -- is best.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: Omar Montejo/ Media Relations University of Miami omontejo@med.miami.edu
